Pilgrims in old age

 Even when death is expected, it can arrive with a shock. The finality of it. The sense of loss. Even for those of us who believe that death is not the final chapter, it’s a door that shuts, leaving us on one side, our loved one on the other.

I recently learned of the death of a dear friend, Michael Graves. I’m holding it in my heart, and it weighs me down. It’s heavy. It leaves me emotionally breathless.

It was not unexpected. For the last several years Michael has been fighting a losing battle with dementia. It’s been hard to watch his personality slipping away, his sharp wit growing dull. Wondering when he’ll stop knowing who I am. (That part never happened, thank God.) And recently a stroke, along with his long-term diabetes, robbed him of his last defenses.

Yesterday Hal and I gathered with some of his long-time friends just to sit around talking, remembering, crying, laughing, praying. It helped to reaffirm our basic belief that Michael is now being welcomed into his heavenly home, into the arms of Jesus, and then embraced by a host of those who have gone before. It helped as we assured each other that the real Michael is back, whole, holy, and full of joy. It’s a vision I’ll hold onto this week and into the future.

He's been on a long pilgrimage and he’s now come home.

My memories are becoming full of Michael as I knew him best over the last 50 years. He brought together so many facets of being human. He was a gifted sought-out university professor of communications. He was an academic, writing scholarly papers, presenting them in conferences, and loving it. He was a very funny man, witty in conversation, sharp in come-backs. He was creative—writing poetry, playing his banjo and singing, acting, problem-solving. I remember fondly our weekly poetry group where the six of us critiqued and affirmed each other; he was good at both.

I remember Michael always in company with Darlene. We were saying yesterday that’s it’s almost impossible to say “Michael” by itself. It’s always “Michael and Darlene.” As couples, we spent many hours in deep conversations and prayer, as well as play. We’re all asking how we can best support Darlene now. She lives in another state and travel is difficult for all of us these days. Prayers and phone calls somehow don’t seem enough. We’ll have to trust God to show us. At a basic level, she has to walk this path alone. But, maybe at a more basic level, her community can walk it with her.

We feel consoled by the fact that, even as Michael’s mind was slipping away, he became increasingly sweeter, almost docile, to those around him, especially Darlene. Although in his life he had been, at times, a fiery passionate person (never docile!), an innate kindness and sensitivity came forth as dominant in his last years. An incredible blessing. I imagine Michael now as still kind and sensitive, but also more fiery, creative, and passionate than ever. A complete person.

The message in church yesterday centered on Psalm 84 and the idea of our pilgrimage toward knowing God. I’ve been connecting it to Michael’s death and to the experience of growing older in general. Here’s the section that speaks to me now:

   Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.
   As they pass through the Valley of Baca [suffering], they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools.
   They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.” (Psalm 84:5-7)

The idea of life as a pilgrimage runs throughout the Bible, as well as in Christian literature (note John Bunyon’s The Pilgrim’s Progress). The word pilgrimage includes the sense of journey or travel as well as the fact of a destination. It’s not a wandering in the wilderness, although it may feel like that at times. According to Psalm 84, it’s journey that passes through hard places like the Valley of Baca (the Valley of the Shadow of Death in Psalm 23). And it leads to a destination: “before God in Zion.” The City of Zion is one of the names for heaven. The point is more in the phrase “before God” than in the name of the place. God is the destination.

Although the whole of life is a pilgrimage, I’m seeing the stage of growing old as a pilgrimage in its own right. It’s a phase of life full of unknowns. The path goes through inevitable valleys of suffering and loss. Sometimes it feels like that’s the whole of it: losing a career; downsizing; the diminishment of the body as we wonder, “What will go wrong next?”; the ever-present possibility of dementia; and on and on. I wonder how the phrase, “They go from strength to strength,” fits in with growing older. Physically, I know I am going from weakness to weakness, and at times it distresses me. Where is this “place of springs”?

There are sign-posts along the way: the retirement party; social security and Medicare; moving to a retirement community; the increasing number of medical specialists and medications; the loss of companions through death; the loss of the ability to remember names (and what we did yesterday); and many more that all tell us, “You’re old now.”

Reading through Psalm 84 and letting it soak in, I’m seeing death as a sign-post. The final sign-post. It’s not the destination or the end of our journey. It’s perhaps the portal we pass through to reach the end of our pilgrimage. A sign-post that seems negative (the final enemy) but that leads to life.

Maybe all the other sign-posts in the pilgrimage of growing older have their secret positive side. Maybe in some real sense we can go from strength to strength, ever as our bodies and our social roles weaken. Maybe we occupy a privileged place in life’s journey, closer to the end of the pilgrimage. Closer to a new beginning.

I hope to see Michael again when I arrive.

Something to think about.

1976

1984

2013 ?

2023