Being the Beloved - A Monthly Blog from CFDM Northwest
By Mark Cutshall
My Aunt Jennie has never been much for Christianity. The only time I’d seen her inside a church was at my father’s memorial service. The next day we went to the cemetery to place his ashes in the wall, and when it was her turn she said a few words to Buddha. Up until a few weeks ago that’s about as spiritual as it got.
Over the past decade we’ve gone on with our lives. The phone calls have been a little more infrequent. Last Christmas I told auntie that our son, whom she doted on at birth as “Baby Ryan,” was turning 24 years old. “You’ve got to be kidding! Let me get a pen and write his name down. How do you spell it?”
I spoke the letters out loud to her and they spelled onset dementia. Last February, this flamboyant figure of my youth who once sashayed around a campfire trying unsuccessfully not to trip, my now-88-year-old aunt fell down in her kitchen. She laid there for three days unwilling to call the EMTs. When the apartment manager found her, Aunt Jennie wondered what was going on. She exited her apartment that morning on a stretcher before the eviction notice could be served. Bank statements revealed she wouldn’t have enough to pay the rent let alone keep buying groceries. Later, while cleaning up things, my brother found years of gambling losses and a loaded gun.
Over the next several months I worked with a network of saints—doctors, nurses, and social workers—to find my aunt a boarding care home in her northern California town. Come April, mom and I flew down to visit her sister.
At 20,000 feet, I bounced between prayers for patience and hope. I asked God more than once for a way to acknowledge his Presence and care so that she might get a taste of what this whole Christian thing is about. Not judgement, but unconditional love.
On the next-to-last day of our stay, our wandering conversations turned to food. “Since we can’t go out to a restaurant,” I said, “what if we brought you breakfast? You can choose. What would you like to eat?”
Her eyes widened. “What about some of those mixed-up eggs and toast and that purple sweet stuff?” The next morning mom and I were back in her room. I laid the take-out box on auntie’s lap. I cradled her hands and asked her if she would like to offer a prayer. Jennie closed her eyes, squeezed my fingers, and bowed her head.
“Goodness. Here we are. I’ve been trying so hard. I was a teacher all those years. It’s gone so fast. I did all that work. How did I get here? Daddy took me under his wing. So funny. I guess this is it! Good-bye.”
It wasn’t three out-loud readings of Scripture and discernment sandwiched in between. It was something else. On this particular morning, a piece of her heart that had been buried for years spoke freely and then feasted. With her own scrambled words, eggs, hash browns and toast, Aunt Jennie communed with Jesus. With messy grape jelly and a napkin to dab her lips she gave me a fresh, new taste of the Divine.
What books, media, activities are nurturing your heart, soul, mind, strength in this season as we are loving God and our neighbor as ourselves? Post in the comments below or hop on over to our Facebook page and share with one another.