It is early Friday morning; I look out of the window onto the darkness down below unable to make out anything as the plane I am on climbs to cruising altitude. I am on my way home from Phoenix. Forty minutes or so later over Bryce Canyon area there is a glimmer of light from the sunrise; just enough to soften the harsh dark peaks with a hue of reddish purple announcing the dawn of new day. I sit back in my seat and open my book, but not long afterwards it slips from my hand as I doze off. I had an early morning start, leaving my hotel at around 4:00 am after rather a sleepless night. It is spring training in Phoenix, which for the uninitiated like me, means fifteen major league baseball teams set up camp for two months as they train for the coming season in the warm Arizona sunshine. It also means hordes of baseball fans descend on Phoenix to watch the workouts and exhibition games, and no doubt for the sunshine as well. The result is hotels are full and car rental car parks empty. It’s not a good time to make a last-minute trip, which mine was, and consequently why I paid well over the odds to stay in a slightly dodgy hotel. Still, the room was clean, but the window was only a single pane and not thick enough to prevent the volume of noise from outside invading. It was one of those nights where you both dread and long for the coming morning.
I wake some time later, retrieve the book from the floor and as I glance up at the screen in the seat back in front of me the flight path shows we are now over north east Oregon. My mind goes back to the previous Friday evening. I was relaxing at home on the sofa next to the wood stove soaking in the warmth and struggling to stay awake reading the same book. Perhaps the common thread here is the book; it’s not exactly a page turner! It had been a cold week; temperatures at night down to minus fifteen Fahrenheit, and still well below freezing during the day. There was a foot and a half of snow on the ground. A bit of warm sunshine wouldn’t be bad, but on the other hand I was looking forward to skiing on the weekend; conditions should be great. My phone rang, rousing me out of my soporific state. It was my wife Leslie. “You said you would come, so I am asking you to come.” Leslie was down in Phoenix on a planned trip visiting her step mum and dad. They, like many others, had retired to the Phoenix area a number of years ago to enjoy the warm weather, baseball and golf among other things. One of the things Bill had looked forward to the most in retirement was being able to watch spring training and in particular the Padres. But Leslie was not ringing to offer me an escape from the cold, concerned I needed thawing out, neither was she pinning away because we had been separated for a few days, but her parents were in crisis. For the last seven years Bill has suffered from Parkinson’s disease, and while his condition has gradually worsened over time, he was still able to function reasonably well. I last saw them in December where we celebrated an early Christmas with them. We cooked dinner; prime, rib, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and roasted Brussel Sprouts. I made mince pies and brandy butter, and we even had a jar of what called itself clotted cream obtained from a World Market, although frankly they should be done under the trade descriptions act. Whatever it was, it was not clotted cream, but nonetheless we all had a thoroughly enjoyable time. Crackers were pulled and we adorned our heads with paper crowns, laughed at the jokes and showed off our swag. Bill was quiet, Parkinson’s effects speech, but was alert and engaged.
My wife Leslie and Bill
Since then, however, in just a matter of weeks, Bill’s health took a drastic decline. His Parkinson’s developed dementia. I read that over eighty percent of Parkinson’s suffers will develop dementia at some point. As I listened to Leslie’s description of what was going on, memories came flooding back into my mind, memories from six years ago which I have set aside, but were now reawakened, although without the depth of pain and sadness they once carried. My mother suffered from dementia.
My mum was my hero, she showed how to live courageously throughout her life as she faced numerous serious health obstacles. On at least one occasion she was knocking on death’s door, she told me she saw a light of such peace she wanted to go, but she came back and like a cactus in the Arizona desert she tenaciously clung to life. Her mobility was limited after a hip replacement surgery went badly wrong, and she lived in constant pain, and yet she never let it get her down. She was always more concerned with others than herself. To go out shopping with her was a wonder. Every shop she entered she was warmly received; “Celia, so lovely to see you!” She gave them a smile and asked them how they were.
Cactus
The dementia was hard to spot at first. She was an extremely literate woman but on occasion struggled to find the right word. Not too alarming, I struggle to find words all the time, although not being as literate as her perhaps they were never there in the first place. But over time she struggled more as the words evaded recall.
She then tried to give me things when I left after a visit. Just small knick-knacks at first; a glass fish which I bought for her birthday when I was about seven. I remember frustrating my dad as I spent ages choosing just the right one, and the delight she had when she opened my present. Was there significance in her giving me back this fish? I am not sure, but I keep it on my shelf, it remains a bond of love swimming across the years. Later she tried to give me quite substantial items, I declined her gifts, but I thought it was odd and it concerned me. I also noticed she slowly stopped doing the things she which bought her pleasure; books were now barely touched, or if opened not comprehended. Her vocabulary recollection became worse, and sentences trailed off mid-way leaving everyone guessing at their conclusion. Clearly there was something wrong and she knew it, but we never talked about it. I wish we had; I can only imagine her dread at the impending shadow which was creeping across her mind leaving her in darkness. My father on the other hand refused to acknowledge anything was amiss, and said she was just tired. As the onset of the disease was gradual perhaps he didn’t notice the changes in her, but I suspect he just refused. The consequence of admitting what is happening is just too painful. If you just ignore it perhaps it will go away, she will get better, but of course that is not how it works. Admittance means change, and change is hard and difficult as you lose control, and my father loved control.
Mum enjoying a “99” on a trip out
One afternoon we couldn’t wake Bill up from a nap and had to take him to hospital. The bays in the emergency room were only separated by curtains making privacy impossible. A woman on one side had sky high blood pressure. The doctor asked if she was taking her medication, she said she was. However, blood tests came back saying she wasn’t, there then ensued a lengthy argument between the doctor, her and her adult son as they claimed her condition could be controlled by herbal supplements. In the bay on the other side a man was in for angina pain. A cardiac doctor wanted to admit him as there was an opening in the cath lab next morning. His wife complained that it was inconvenient; they had plans for the evening. Couldn’t they come back in a few days? It’s hard when we are not in control.
Things came to a head when one morning at breakfast when mum passed out. One minute she was awake, the next her head was hanging over her bowl of muesli. “Oh, she does this quite often” dad told me. “She will come round in a minute.” A minute went past and she didn’t come too so I rang 999 for an ambulance. We caught up with her later after she was admitted to hospital. She was confused about where she was and what was going on. Were we in a restaurant? We better hurry up or we will lose our reservation! Even dad had to grudgingly admit something wasn’t right, although he wouldn’t go so far as to say she had dementia.
Her condition continued to deteriorate and dad despite his insistence to the contrary could no long look after her or indeed keep her safe. As much as I didn’t want to, I forced the issue and we started to look for a care home. We were fortunate to find a good one, and a couple of weeks later she went off while dad remained in their flat.
And so, it progressed for a number of years. Mum’s sentences became monosyllabic, she could no longer feed herself, and although she recognised me as someone she knew, she didn’t know I was her son. Actually, she called me by her brother’s name; Norman, but as she thought very highly of him, I took it as a compliment. Dementia is a hard disease for both the sufferer and the family. The person you love is gradually stripped away before your eyes, like trees dropping their leaves in winter so their personalities, likes, dislikes, voice, and recollections, one by one wither away as they are cut off from the vital source of life. What is left is a shell who resembles the person you once knew on the outside, but on the inside seems devoid of any semblance of recognition. And yet…
As a proud Scotswoman there are no guesses as to who mum’s favourite poet was, but I know she enjoyed others although I don’t know if she ever read or liked Thomas Hardy. Although his writing is rather dark as he strips away the trappings of society to reveal the emptiness and indeed hopelessness beneath even Hardy could, when he really looked, see a hint of hope.
The Darkling Thrush
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
Thomas Hardy
Sometimes I would study her face, and just occasionally I would see that little glint of mischievousness in her eye, and a hint of a smile come across her creased face, it was just a glimmer; she was still my mum. I remember a conversation I had with one of the carers at her home who told me how much harder it is for families than them. “We never knew them before they came here” she said, “we just know them as they are now, we love them for who they are.” Loss is in the eye of the beholder.
Mum looking cool in my sunglasses
I also know God loved her, He never lost sight of who she was.
For mum, her journey out of this world took several years before the sun finally set, but for Bill it was just over a week. Whether it is long or short the inevitability is we are all heading towards a sunset. Or is it a sunset?
Malcolm Guite in his wonderful book “Waiting on the Word,” takes his readers through the advent season with a poem for each day, and as advent is about the coming of God’s light into the world through Jesus Christ many poems are centred on light and the rising of the sun rather than its setting. Guite writes;
“It is a traditional poetic metaphor, to the point of being a cliché, to think of the early morning and the first light in the east as analogous to the beginning of our lives, our childhood and youth, of the noon as representing our years of full vigour and strength, and the declining of the sun as representing our waning years. This is why we have to endure such dreadful names of retirement and nursing homes as Sunset View.
Chronologically, we may journey from the east to the west, but spiritually the reverse is the case. Our churches face east, but the font, which we might associate with birth and babyhood, is by the west door; it is there, even in our infancy, that we deal with our dying, We are baptised into the sunset and declination, made one with Christ in His death, so that we might also be one with Him in His resurrection. Thereafter, we move eastwards, towards that rising and beginning, that eternal Sabbath, the first day of the week, our sunrise.”[i]
Sunset
My photo album has many more pictures of sunsets than sunrises, it is just more convenient unless you have to be up early for a flight! But God prefers sunrises, He wants us to see the sunrise when we reach the end of our lives and He provides the way through faith in His Son Jesus Christ. It looked like the sunset on His life but three days later some women saw a sunrise which not only softened but demolished the sharp peaks of death.
George Herbert wrote a poem which points us to the possibility not of sunset, but of sunrise at the end of this life if we have faith in Jesus Christ.
The Dawning
Awake, sad heart, whom sorrow ever drowns;
Take up thine eyes, which feed on earth;
Unfold thy forehead, gathered into frowns;
Thy Saviour comes, and with him mirth:
Awake, awake,
And with a thankful heart his comforts take.
But thou dost still lament, and pine, and cry,
And feel his death, but not his victory.
Arise, sad heart; if thou dost not withstand,
Christ’s resurrection thine may be;
Do not by hanging down break from the hand
Which, as it riseth, raiseth thee:
Arise, arise,
And with his burial linen dry thine eyes.
Christ left his grave clothes, that we might, when grief
Draws tears or blood, not want a handkerchief[ii].
George Herbert
Jesus can turn our setting sun and gathering darkness at the end of our lives whether it is short or long into the most glorious sunrise if we ask Him.
[i] Malcolm Guite. Waiting on the Word (Norwich: Canterbury Press 2015), 80 -81
[ii] George Herbert. George Herbert The Complete Poetry (London: Penguin Random House UK 2015), 106
