23 Times — Answering with Love

[Hubi]

Just imagine this scene for a moment:

An 82-year-old father is sitting on the sofa with his 50-year-old son.

The father has grown old. He is a little frail now, slower, perhaps also more forgetful.

Suddenly, a crow lands on the windowsill.

The father asks:

“What is that?”

“A crow, Dad.”

A few seconds later:

“What is that?”

The son is already becoming a little impatient.

“Dad, it’s a crow. I just told you that.”

Then the father asks for a third time:

“What is that, my son?”

Now the son loses his patience:

“It’s a crow, for goodness’ sake! How many times do I have to tell you?”

The father says nothing.

He goes into his room and comes back with an old notebook.

He hands it to his son.

“Please read this.”

The son reads:

“Today I sat on the sofa with my three-year-old son. A crow landed by the window. My son asked me 23 times, ‘Daddy, what is that?’ And every single time I answered, ‘That’s a crow, my sweetheart.’ I took him in my arms and stroked his head. I was grateful for his curiosity. It was a moment filled with love and warmth.”

The son reads...

and falls silent.

Because now he understands.

He was that little boy.

Back then, he had asked 23 times.

And his father had answered patiently 23 times.

Now the father was old.

And suddenly, the son’s patience was gone.

---

Isn’t that something we should all stop and think about?

As children, we need an incredible amount of patience.

Our parents explain things to us over and over again.

They help us.

They wait for us.

They listen to us.

They carry us.

And sometimes we ask the same question ten times.

And they still say:

“That’s okay, sweetheart.”

But then our parents grow old.

Now they need patience.

Now they may need a little more time.

Now they may tell the same story for the third time.

Now they may ask something they have already asked before.

And we might think:

“You already know that.”

But perhaps we should think differently:

“Now it’s my turn to be patient.”

---

The Bible gives us very clear counsel on this.

At Proverbs 23:22, we read:

“Listen to your father who caused your birth, and do not despise your mother when she grows old.”

Notice those last words:

“When she grows old.”

Jehovah knows that our parents grow old.

He knows that, at some point, the roles begin to change.

The hands that once held ours may begin to tremble.

The feet that once walked beside us may become slower.

The people who once explained everything to us may suddenly need things explained to them.

And Jehovah does not say:

“Be patient with them as long as it is easy.”

No.

He specifically says:

“...when she grows old.”

Especially then.

---

And Ephesians 4:32 gives us another beautiful principle:

“But become kind to one another, tenderly compassionate.”

Kindness is not shown only in big things.

Sometimes it is shown in one simple sentence:

“I’ll explain it to you again.”

Or:

“Go ahead. Tell me the story again.”

Or simply:

“I have time.”

Perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts we can give our parents.

Not money.

Not something expensive.

Time.

Closeness.

Patience.

A hug.

A listening ear.

---

And someday...

perhaps the day will come when we no longer have that opportunity.

Then we might give anything to sit on that sofa one more time.

To hear that voice one more time:

“What is that?”

And perhaps we would say:

“Dad, ask me again.”

“Mom, tell me the story again.”

“I have time now.”

But by then, it may be too late.

That is why we should not save our love for later.

If our parents are still with us:

Call them.

Visit them.

Listen to them.

Be patient with them.

And if they tell the same story for the fifth time...

perhaps we can think about those 23 questions.

Because back then, their patience was a gift to us.

Today, we can give that gift back.

---

And perhaps we can take just one sentence with us:

It is not the question that matters — it is the person asking it.

The crow was completely unimportant.

The question was unimportant.

But the little boy was important.

And that old father is just as important today.

Perhaps one day each of us will be sitting on that sofa.

Perhaps we will be the ones asking something twice.

Perhaps we will need someone who does not respond with irritation, but with love.

And perhaps then we will be grateful for people who understood:

Love does not count how many times I have to explain something.
Love asks: How can I show you today that you matter to me?

So...

When someone needs our patience today...

let’s give it to them.

When someone needs our time...

let’s give it to them.

And when someone asks the same question one more time...

perhaps we will answer not only with our words.

But with everything we do:

**“Yes. I’ll tell you again.

Because you matter to me.”**

[AnnieB]

Thank you, for Jehovah provide through you today the words I needed to hear. My dear mother is dealing with dementia and this happening. I really appreciate every word you said.

[jdcarlson]

3 hours ago, Hubi said:

Just imagine this scene for a moment:

An 82-year-old father is sitting on the sofa with his 50-year-old son.

 

My Dear Brother Hubert,

 

Thank you such an insightful posting.

 

My father's dementia began showing itself about 25 years ago.

 

Although he and I did not have the same kind of conversation you described, we did have conversations, and interactions, that demonstrated the "exchange of places" as parents get oltder and the children are forced to take on a parental role in some fashion.

 

When I was young, my father could (at least in my eyes) do anything and everything. He  had the ability to think problems through "three dimensionaly." Not just in ideas, but also physically analyze things in multiple directions.

 

In WWII he was in the Army Air Corps (the U.S. Air Force did not come about until AFTER the end of WWII). He grew up in the upper peninsula of Michigan, where it snows nine months out of the year. He graduated High School in the late 1930s with a significant love of mechanical things. One time he wrapped his self-built motorcycle around a tree (with him still on it) after hitting a patch of "black Ice" on the road. He was in a coma for three days. He wanted to fly airplanes, but inner ear problems affected he awareness of attitude while flying (ie., is your plane right side up, up side down, or just in a steep bank). He ended up doing mechanical work on airplanes, until a senior offier recognized his analytical ability, and transferred in to the officer's staff. Even though he enlisted in th 1930s, well before the Pearl Harbor attack once WWIi started he was stuck there for the duration of the war plus six months (as did all in the military in WWII). He spent the entire war "stateside." He received transfer orders to go to the Pacific one week befor Japan surrendered. Those transfer orders were immediately rescinded.

 

The first house my parents bought was an un completed tract house that they had to finish (the builder went bankrupt before he finished the house). Ma father had to do all of the electrical work, plumbing work, cabinet work, finishing trim work in the house they bought.

 

As a child I was VERY impressed that it seemed to me, watching my father finish putting the house together, that my father coud do EVERYTHING.

 

An incident that my mother ejoyed telling others was when she and I were "downtown" shopping. Somehow (no one knows that detail) I had a baloon with a string. I was very carefully holding on to the string since I wanted to keep the baloon. Somehow, the baloon burst. A couple of miniutes later she realized I was not walking beside her. She turned around and saw me picking up the pieces of the baloon. I told her "I will take these to daddy so he can fix my baloon."

 

That image of my daddy able to fix anythng and everything lasted for about 40 years.

 

in the 1980s my parents, my wife, and I, jointly bought a residental rental duplex as an investment. As investment proprty it worked well. The refrigerator in one of the apartments quit, and we had to replace it. The decision was made to replace it with a model that had water and ice in the door. My father (as the consummate handyman/fixer in my mind) was going to hook up the refrigerator. The duplex was about a mile from my office. One morning I got a call from my father telling me he needed a little help with the referigeraor hookup. Five minutes later I walked in to the apartment to see him sitting on the floor looking at a coil of copper tubing and several copper fittings. I had to tell him how to turn off the water to the apartment at the street, how to attach the copper tube for the water & Ice in the door to the back of the refrigerator. Then route the copper tube around at the badk of the kitchen cabinet, the drill a hold in the end of the cabinet to run the tubing out of the cabinet to the referigerator. He asked how he would know which pipe under the kitchen to attach the tubing. I told him the cold water feed pipe. He asked how he could tell which was hot water and which was cold water. I told him to turn on the hot water, and then feel the pipes under the sink leading up to the faucet, and then he would know which one was warm water, which meant the other one was cold water and theat is where he needed to attach the cold water pipe feed leading to the referigerator.

 

When I finished that explanation, I realized that he was no longer the "ultimate fixer of anyting" in the way I had thought of him all of my life until then. When he had to complete that first house, he had to do all of the plumbing. In the late 1940s, just after WWII, the only way one could install plumbing was with galvanized iron pipe (if I remember correctly, the "high pressure" pipe, i.e., pipe bringing in water from the street) was 1/2" interior diameter, about 3/4" exterior diameter. One had to measure every bend, find the right size 90 degree or 45 degree fitting, and cut the piece of pipe to fit. When measuring how long the pipe was to be cut, one had to take into account how much thread would be needed to carve out on the end of the pipe so when everything was tightened up it would fit. That meant after you had cut the pipe, you had to manually carve the threads on the end of the pipe. Thankfully there was a tool for carving the threads called a "die." Also, one had to use plumbers' putty  (or in later years, threading tape) to be sure that when the pipe and fittings were screwed together they would be watertight. If one had a lengthy run of pipe, at times when working on the fittings on the end of the pipe where one was, one could be "unscrewing" the other end of the galvanized pipe (which might be 30 feet away, and hard to get to now because since you fixed the far end of the pipe, and you are working on the "crawl space" under the house, you might have done something else in the mean time that prevented you from getting to the far end of the pipe). Another problem for him was the interior walls were finished. He had to figure out how to drill up from the "crawl space" in just the right place to run the galvanized stiff pipe up in the wall for just the correct place.

 

I was shocked. The same man who had done all of the complexity of plumbing up a house the "old fashioned manual way" with very stiff pipe that could not be bent, could not figure out how to run  piece of flexible copper tubing around the back of the kitchen cabinet to connect the water & Ice to the referigerator.

 

I happend to mention that experience to the son of an elderly client who was helping his parent cope with gathering the information needed so we could complete his father's individual income tax return. The client's son said, I have a book I will bring you. You will find a lot of good things.

 

When he brought be the book the title was: The Thirty-six Hour Day. The book was written from the perspective of a Care Giver. It was well written, and had many useful points. Everything in the Book was in line with the scriptural counsel we receive from the Society.

 

When my wife's memory/dementia problems began to show, our family physician said: "There is a book I need to find for you to read. Its title is The Thirty-six Hour Day."

 

I told him I had read that book 20 years earlier when my faher's demential began to show itself.

 

Our doctor's comment was "When you read that book 20 years ago, it was already 10 years old. The sad part is that medical science does not know any more about the disease than thirty years ago."

 

The one point that sticks in my mind from that book is that when a parent says something hurtful, remember it is not the parent that is calling you names. It is the disease saying all of the bad and hurtful things.

 

When a loved one gets to the horrible hurtful and belittling stage it helps to rember it is the disease doing those bad things.

 

Hopefully, befor an elderly loved one gets to the horrible, belitting stage, they may spend some time when your posting would be VERY helpful.

 

I wish it had been in a preamble or forward of the book they gave me to read. That would have been extremely helpful to read that first, so that a Care Taker could recognize that development of the memory decline statement. 

 

In some cases, the problem may not go beyond the situation where your post would be VERY helpful.

 

But in cases where the problem continue, and the older one continues to decline, your post would still be helpful because it gives the Care Taker more insight into what is the best loving care to give them.

 

My first exposure to the mental decline was with my father. Sadly, I had the same problem, ony more intense, with my wife. I began to recognize her short term memory decline about 15 years ago. My father had always made a good living for us. We never lacked for anything. But, my parents could not afford any of the better memory care facilities. Thankfully, the Social Worker helping my mother deal with my father's problems found a Medicaid Qualified be at perhaps the best facility around. I had been very impressed with the dignity and kindnes shown to my father by the staff. He was at the point that he did not remember everyone's name, and he could not understand everything that was said, but to him it was VERY important that he go to the Kingdom Hall every Sunday. On Sunday I would drive out to the facility to get him. The staff would already have him shaved, with his hair combed,  dressed with a Coat and Tie, all ready to go to the Kingdom Hall. I did not have to dress him, or anything else. The staff had already done everything to get him ready.

 

My reaction was: "Who in the world does that for a MEDICAID patient?"  ! ! ! ! !

 

When my wife's difficultie began to present themselves, and the family doctor recommend I read the book I had already read 20 years earlier, I realized I needed to do something. I began to talk with my elderly clients about arrangements they and their friends had made. Every one of them that were talking about the facility where the Social Worker found the Medicaid qualified bed had nothing but good things to say about it.

 

According to scribbled notes in my files, I began negotiating at that same facility (Azalea Trace) in 2014. Many people are "put off" because of their pricing model. The require a substantial "buy in" to be able to live there. But, the "upside" of ther arrangement is that once you are admitted for residency, your fee does not change if you have a need for a higher level of service. They have "independent living" apartments, "assissted living" apartments, and a "skilled nursing" section.

 

Azalea Trace has a "waiting list" of people who want to move in. My wife and I gave them $1,000 to put us on the waiting list. My wife and I made ten or twelve trips before we found an apartment we liked. We signed the contract, and gave them the "buy in" money in December, 2017. We moved into our "indipendent living" apartment in March, 2018 (the couple who had been in our apartment before us was in the apartment for 20 years - Azalea Trace had to do considerable work, including new cabinets, new appliances, new flooring, etc.).

 

In 2021 my wife's dementia got to the point that she had to go to the "skilled nursing" section. True to their word, when my wife went to "skilled nursing" our monthly fee did not change.

 

The staff at the skilled nursing section showed her the same kindness and dignity that they had shown my father 20 years earlier. I am so very thankful for that.

 

My wife passed away on February 1st. of this year.

 

I have guilt feelings over not spending enough time with her when she was in the skilled nursing section.

 

I wish I had read (and saved) your post before she passed away. It would have helped tremendously.

 

When she was in the skilled nursing section, it was very difficult to go there (even though it is in the saame complex, just three buildings away).  The person in the skilled nursing facility was not the same energetic, loving, youthful, ready to do things, and lover of Jehovah as the young lady I married 63 years ago.

 

Your post would have helped very much.

 

Thank you for such an insightful and loving post.

 

Jim