Forgive Me My Knees [R, 7-18-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—Forgive Me My Knees [R, 7-18-24]

 

Helen apologized to me several times yesterday. Great contrition and shame. You know why? You know what awful thing she did? She needed help.

Sixty-five years ago, I promised that I’d give her help if she ever needed it. That’s what “in sickness or in health” is about. You’d think that sixty-five years would be enough for that to sink in. But Helen is not supposed to need help. She is supposed to give help.

Yesterday morning, though, she finally needed help. Woke up with a knee that hurt so badly she couldn’t get out of bed. Couldn’t go down the hall to the bathroom.

I was up early [4:30], as I always am, because of the demands of my surgically reduced semi-colon. I was on my sofa in the living room, drinking my chocolate pinon coffee, when my cell phone rang. Much too early and much too loud. I was disgusted with it. I didn’t want it to wake Helen. Who could be calling at such an hour? Then I realized it was my special ring tone for Helen alone. But she was just through the wall in the bedroom…

She was afraid that if she yelled for help, it would frighten me, make me think something was wrong with her. She needed help, but she didn’t want me to worried about it. Since her cell was beside the bed, she thought it would be better to call me.

Well, yes, something was wrong. There was excruciating pain in her knee. And, yes, she needed help. She couldn’t move. But she has so little experience with needing help that she doesn’t know how to ask for it.

Reminds me of when the flatboat full of Lutheran pastors sank in Lake Wobegon. Water wasn’t deep. Even the short ones were only up to their necks. They just stood there, because nobody knew how to call for help.

We got Helen out of bed. I dug out my father’s striped white blind-man cane, and Uncle Ted’s old generic wooden cane, and, as she later told a nurse on the phone, “I can move at all only with two canes and one husband.” 

But Ron brought his walker and new, adjustable cane. Allyson and Glenn brought us lunch. The walker was a game changer. The knee still hurt, but she had stability with only one leg. She could go to the bathroom by herself. The chicken casserole was excellent.

So, she started apologizing… who was she, to be using Ron’s walker and eating Allyson’s casserole? Who was she, to be asking her husband for help?

Old age brings up independence-vs-acceptance issues that we hardly knew even existed before. We started dealing with that when we were quite little, three to five years old. “Initiative vs guilt” in the terms of developmental psychologist Erik Erikson. At that age, many of us learn that we are supposed to be independent, but only so that we can be helpful to others. We internalize that. Independence is a major issue. It defines our whole lifetime.

Then comes old age, when decline and decrepitude erode independence, when absence of energy--and eyes, and legs, and backs—requires us to accept help rather than just give it.

Life is always about holding opposites together, isn’t it? Giving help when others need it, and accepting help when we need it, is a balancing act. We’re not likely to get them into the right proportions, ever. That’s why Jesus talked so much about forgiveness. Of others, and of ourselves. “Forgive me my knee, as I forgive those who knee against me…”

John Robert McFarland