The Deadbolt
One morning while I was visiting, my mother's high pitched voice pulled me from the heaviness of my night's sleep. Two words, "Olin, don't." pierced the air and catapulted me into the kitchen. There my father stood with a Philip's screwdriver in one hand and the entire deadbolt in the other.
"Olin, we're going to have to put it back. You have to help me."
I could hear first panic and then frustration in her voice. Those emotions faded away as the professional caregiver walked him through the procedure. Mechanical things had always been his forte and not hers.
The man and the house looked the same but for her this was definitely foreign soil. My father who had felt so much at home with a multitude of tools could not connect a purpose or name to any device he held in his hand. This man who had done much to turn a bungalow into an ample ranch house now often thought that the fruit of his love , planning and hard work was a motel or a stranger's dwelling. The work of my father's hands was still standing but in his mind it was as if it never existed. . Not just the house he had planned, but also the work reputation that he had earned, and the five children he had helped to raise, all of these things seemed to have been erased from his memory. Even though my mother's name usually remained hidden in the recesses of his mind, he still seemed to know that she was as central in his life as she had been for almost 50 years. As Daddy was more and more detaching from this world, my hope was that my heavenly father was drawing him closer to the next world.
Mother knew this part of her story was not over. Many more days of being a caregiver wife lay before her. All of her five children were spread out from Vermont to Georgia . All five of us called regularly but none of us could do what only she could. Each of us at best were only vaguely familiar to my father, like someone who greets you by name in a store while you desperately try to remember something about your greeter. No matter how helpful our calls, advice, and visits might have been, the majority of the burden fell on my mother's shoulders. Only the multitude of ways God had used this man to bless her over the years somewhat eased the load. Only God knows the many ways he sustained my mother by his grace during these difficult days.
"Olin, we're going to have to put it back. You have to help me."
I could hear first panic and then frustration in her voice. Those emotions faded away as the professional caregiver walked him through the procedure. Mechanical things had always been his forte and not hers.
The man and the house looked the same but for her this was definitely foreign soil. My father who had felt so much at home with a multitude of tools could not connect a purpose or name to any device he held in his hand. This man who had done much to turn a bungalow into an ample ranch house now often thought that the fruit of his love , planning and hard work was a motel or a stranger's dwelling. The work of my father's hands was still standing but in his mind it was as if it never existed. . Not just the house he had planned, but also the work reputation that he had earned, and the five children he had helped to raise, all of these things seemed to have been erased from his memory. Even though my mother's name usually remained hidden in the recesses of his mind, he still seemed to know that she was as central in his life as she had been for almost 50 years. As Daddy was more and more detaching from this world, my hope was that my heavenly father was drawing him closer to the next world.
Mother knew this part of her story was not over. Many more days of being a caregiver wife lay before her. All of her five children were spread out from Vermont to Georgia . All five of us called regularly but none of us could do what only she could. Each of us at best were only vaguely familiar to my father, like someone who greets you by name in a store while you desperately try to remember something about your greeter. No matter how helpful our calls, advice, and visits might have been, the majority of the burden fell on my mother's shoulders. Only the multitude of ways God had used this man to bless her over the years somewhat eased the load. Only God knows the many ways he sustained my mother by his grace during these difficult days.
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