CHRISTMAS IS A TIME OF NEW LISTENING [M, 12-18-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter: CHRISTMAS IS A TIME OF NEW LISTENING [M, 12-18-23]

 

When my mother was in the nursing home, she talked all the time of how she wanted to go home. The problem was that there was no one at home who could take care of her.

 She couldn’t do even the most basic things for herself, and Dad was 89 years old and almost totally blind. He had worked hard at caring for her, and for their house, but he was worn out. We went over often to help, but we lived three hours away. She needed daily care. I still remember the day he was waiting for us on the porch when we arrived. “I just can’t do it anymore,” he said. “You’ve got to put her into a nursing home.”

It wasn’t just the physical care that had worn on my father. Mother didn’t appreciate what he did. She belittled him all the time. He was just ground down.

But after we got her into the nursing home, he started feeling guilty about it. He knew she hated it there. He couldn’t even go see her very often.  He couldn’t drive. It was a small town without taxis or public transportation. Helen and I both had jobs, hers M-F, at least, and I worked weekends.

He began to forget how unpleasant she was to live with. He started to get his strength back. He asked us to take him to get her to bring her home for Christmas.

We didn’t think it was a good idea, but when it’s your parents, you do a lot of things you think are bad ideas. We took him to see her. He was going to surprise her with the good news of “going home.” He started to tell her about how he was there to take her home for Christmas. But as soon as he started, she broke in. More out of habit than anything else, I think, she began to criticize him. One of her favorite phrases was, “Old man, you don’t know anything…” and then she would detail all the things he didn’t know. That’s what she did that day. He never got the chance to take her home, to give her what she wanted. As she railed at him, he finally muttered, “Well, you can just stay in this damn place then.” She didn’t hear even that. She wasn’t listening.

Christmas is a time of remembrance and nostalgia, but it’s important to remember that was not what the first Christmas was about. It was about a totally new start. A start of unlikely listening. Like angels singing. And a proclamation of peace on earth. We won’t hear it if we’re too busy talking. We’ll miss what we most want to hear.

John Robert McFarland

I don’t want to give the wrong impression of Mother. She saw things in her own way, but she was not a mean person in general. She liked people. She could be quite nice to anyone…except her husband. They were the model couple for “can’t live with and can’t live without.”