They Used to Carry Us--Now We Carry Them

Back in Missouri last week where I had gone to spend a few days helping with the care of my dad, Mom called to me one evening. Craig had arrived back from an appointment with my dad, and he was carrying my dad into the house!

Mom thought I should take a picture! 

Dad has lost so much weight, and he was so weak that Craig just picked him up in his arms and carried him inside. 

My parents used to carry us; now we carry them.  

When Dad was resting in his chair, Mom sat down to play the piano. 

"Day by Day" she played, one of Dad's favorite hymns. 

 I took a few snapshots--because I never knew which one might be the last one.

Tucked onto the only chair in their room was this little pillow my niece had cross-stitched for Mom and Dad's 60th anniversary. 

I slept in the double bed next to Mom's in Mom's room, the bed Dad can't sleep in anymore. Mom helped me put on clean sheets and a clean comforter--a gift from old friends many years ago. 

I noticed the lovely sheets on Mom's bed--brightly flowered with snow white background, with a matching pillow case.

"I got them at a garage sale!" she explained when I complimented how pretty and snow white they were. My mom is a classy lady! She likes clean sheets and neatly organized drawers.

You don't have to have money to have class--and my mom has class!

Mom went to pay the property taxes last week one day while Dad was at dialysis. I took her to the court house to do that, as it was not far from our other stops, and it saved postage. 

The lady inside was friendly and kind. Yes, Mom had figured and counted correctly.

Mom is good that way.

And one of those days, I found her resting--something she didn't do much. She was run ragged caring for Dad, even when I and others were there. 

Care-giving is simply consuming.

 I didn't have much time to just take pictures, even though I tried to take one of these pretty red berries on the branch outside their windows.

I tried to keep meals on the table--or on a plate taken to Dad in his chair.
He liked these potato patties made from leftover mashed potatoes.   

I spent a couple hours at my brother's house one day, cutting sweet potatoes from their garden into fries. Those were yummy, too! 

I did that while Tim, who had driven me over to Missouri in his little old stick shift car, helped the cousins butcher the deer they had bagged this season.

And more than once I escaped to my sister's home--to try to regroup. 

My hat is off to all caregivers.

God bless you! How do you do it?  

Three days into it I wanted to run. But I couldn't. I knew I had to overcome.

I had to overcome sleepless hours at night, and watching someone I loved suffer and worry about his condition and be confused and upset about things because meds were making him loopy.

Foot baths, meals, bringing blankets and pillows and prepping for appointments and dialysis, comforting, rubbing his back, listening, helping back to the bathroom and trying to figure out how to treat bed sores that three doctors haven't helped much with; coming up with pleasant conversation to divert his thinking...

such as telling about how two of his granddaughters were in the local paper that week!

Crystal and Candace had visited the open house at the florist shop where two other granddaughters work, and a reporter came through to snap a picture!  

"Even to your old age, I am He,

and even to gray hairs I will carry you," God said in Isaiah 46:4.

"I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you."

And that isn't a promise just for the aging parents who are frail and weak.

It's for caregivers, too. 

God carries us both when we can't carry on.