Life

This video and accompanying comments at The Anchoress are so poignant. The parents of a friend of ours are in the same position. Her mom was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers almost ten years ago and now resides in a nursing home. She no longer recognizes any of her family and is physically very frail. She is about 70 years old. Her husband is lonely. They live in a very remote area so the nursing home is an hour away. He visits often. He is active in his church, has a home business, and two of their five children live nearby.

Last week I visited my Dad and had another amazing conversation with his roommate. This time, I didn't wish for an interruption and we talked for 45 minutes. Jerry doesn't have dementia. He's had a seizure disorder that makes expressing himself difficult. Yet I understand much of what he is trying to say. He is a brilliant man who is able to find another way around a word he can't recall or a sentence that won't come out right.

The line in the Hail Mary "be with us sinners now, and at the hour of our death" speaks to me. The hour of our death may be a moment, a few days, months, or even years. Death is difficult. Grace is needed.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.” - Caesar
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar Act II

Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."
"Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
I Cor. 15:51-57