The End of Days
Just got back from five days in Florida, gone to visit my maternal grandmother in the hospital. I've much more to say about it, but even if you don't read the rest of this, say a prayer or have a good thought for Ruth Hunt Bates, age 86, approaching the end of her days.
I don't even know where to start. Being around someone in her situation (hospitalized, sick, weak, hanging on to what little quality of life is left) gives me so many things to think about. Death is a big subject.
Just thinking about all she's seen and done is amazing enough. She was born in 1916, in America. But it was an America all but unrecognizable to me. There were no freeways, no commercial air travel, no computers, no television. Socal was still a frontier, a dusty end of the road filled with orange groves and horse ranches. Surburbia was not yet a way of life; it was either small towns, farms or the city. Space travel wasn't even a dream. She lived through two world wars and 16 US Presidents, beginning with Woodrow Wilson. She saw it all, lived through it all. It's extraordinary that one life encompasses all those changes, and I've just focused on the technological.
And she stayed married to one cantankerous engineer though all this, raising three children, one of them of course my mother. They all turned out to be excellent people. Her family life was her focus, and the rise of America and technology was just a backdrop to her more immediate concerns of children, meals and education. So it is with most of us.
My grandmother's good humor and spirit amazes me. She's had a tough run the last ten years, with the deaths of her husband, two of three children, and the gradual loss of her health and mobility. It would be easy for her to be bitter about the hardships that seem to pile on at the end of days, but she isn't. She's optimistic, cheerful, and uncomplaining, even to this day. Even in the hospital, not knowing what comes next, but knowing it won't be good. Amazing. That says a lot about her and her spirit, her strength. I hope I can be as strong if/when I'm in that situation.
This all reminds me of two sayings. My salt-of-the-Earth friend Jim Moore says "gettin' old ain't for sissies...". Very true; life gets tough. And I've often said that perhaps the whole purpose of life, of the experiences you gather, is to make you tough enough for those days at the end. Facing mortality requires a maturity and a strength that most of us aren't born with, we have to earn it. It seems that my grandmother has earned it.
And just as I didn't know where to start this note, I don't know how to end it. Let's just say that after these few visits with her in the hospital, my admiration for my grandmother has increased immeasurably. I hope and pray she has many more days, but if it's not to be, I'm impressed and comforted by the grace with which she's dealing with it all.
6:12:54 PM 
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