Mom and Crazy Time




My mother-in-law is old. Why is it that even as I write the word “old” it has a negative feel to it, it conjures up in me emotions I want to avoid.

Mom Thornburg is old. Her skin is wrinkly, hair grey, body stooped. A few years ago she had some “mini” strokes, which left her extremely weak on the left side of her body. So she lists to the left side and drools out of the left side of her mouth. When she eats, she struggles to keep food in her mouth. It’s not a pretty sight. Mom is pretty much stuck in her wheel chair and only gets to be where other folks put her, which of course includes the toilet…when she can hold things together long enough for them to get her there. Mom is old. Her body is giving out on her.

However, her mind isn’t keeping pace with the decline of her body. It’s remaining in pretty good shape. The other day as we were reminiscing with Dad Thornburg about some old acquaintances, Dad named some folks incorrectly. Mom started mumbling and as we leaned closer to hear, we discovered she was giving a corrective. Mom’s mind is still pretty much hitting on all cylinders.

The other salient characteristic about Mom these days is that she cries a lot. I mean, Mom really cries a lot. It doesn’t take much to make her cry. When we do something kind for her, Mom cries. When we pray together she cries. When we tell her something that the grandkids are doing, she cries. She especially cries if we tell her something exciting or hopeful about the grandkids.

Now I find all this crying interesting. I’m sure there are some folks that would say that’s part of the getting older thing, she can’t control her physical responses to emotional stimuli the way she used to, and I’m sure there’s some truth to this. However, I’m suspicious that there’s more to it. I’m wondering if this old woman, this beautiful, old woman, is growing in her mental and spiritual capacity to recognize beauty when she sees it, and when she sees it, it moves her to tears. I’m wondering if the false blinders between the temporal and eternal is getting thinner and thinner for Mom and her tears are a reaction to the beauty of the eternal she is seeing in the temporal things around her.

It makes me also wonder how frustrating it might be for Mom to see all this incredible beauty around her, beauty that surrounds all of us, but which most of us are so caught up in the mundane that we are blind to it, and yet, her physical body is preventing her from entering into that beauty the way she would love to enter into it.

The other day we had Mom and Dad over for Thanksgiving. Guess what Mom did when we wheeled her into our festive looking dining room. Yep. She cried. She saw the beauty and wept. But how frustrating it must have been for her not to jump up and join in on cooking the turkey, whipping the mashed potatoes, setting out her Belgium china that she had given Miriam and we used that day, and hugging all of her loved ones sitting around the table.

A few days later I was getting my haircut by my female barber and she was moaning about how much she detested Thanksgiving. All it was to her was nine hours of cooking, six hours of putting up with greedy relatives and three hours of cleaning up, so she could finally rest…and then go back to work the next day. If only my barber could see through Mom’s eyes. The glory would drop her like a sack of Thanksgiving potatoes on her posterior.

How frustrating it must be for Mom to see the incredible beauty of God all around her, brought to tears by it, and yet not be able to enter into it physically because that old body is just giving out. That old body that has served her and so many others so well. I could understand why someone would want to get rid an old carcass, like pulling off fishing waders, heavy jeans, a sweatshirt and anything else, in order to jump into a cold swimming hole on a hot summer day.

I guess I’m especially curious about Mom’s crying episodes because in the last few years, I’m finding tears filling my eyes more and more often…sometimes at inconvenient and embarrassing times. Yesterday I was simply telling a friend that I really appreciated the memorial service I attended for his mother, and then next thing I knew I was choking up. Sheeze, he wasn’t even getting emotional. But the service was so beautiful and the life this woman had lived was so rich and blessed.

Us young folks look at Mom and others that are really getting old and feel sorry for them. I mean, look at that body. It’s all wrinkly. It won’t do what you want it to do. It creates chronic pain. And it smells. And we pray for healing.

And yet, I wonder if it’s we who need healing. In my humble estimation, there’s a good chance that Mom is seeing so much more in life than I am. That she is seeing dazzling beauty, even in the midst of her frustrating pain and sorrow. And when I look at this beautiful woman, so often I can’t see the beauty in her any more. Why is it when I look at my six month old granddaughter, I’m filled with awe and joy. Elysia and Mom Thornburg physically have a lot in common, and yet I struggle to see the beauty in Mom, but not Elysia. Who needs to be healed? Most likely me and not Mom. Mom just needs to be freed, freed to run into the fields of flowers and birds and grasses and all the beauty and the arms of Jesus.

Pray for our healing, Mom. Pray that we can see the beauty you see. We love you.