“Spiritual Lessons from Caring for Your Parents”

Rev. Peg Boyle Morgan
Westside Unitarian Universalist Congregation
October 11, 2009

When we are faced with making critical life decisions for our parents, or for that matter, any loved one, we enter a liminal state between the momentous concrete decisions we face and the spiritual realities of our losses. 

We sometimes have long months and even years to help our loved ones, a tiring intensity for our lives, …filled with visits, family discussions, family disagreements, watching the diminishment of mom or dad, negotiating with facility staff, with doctors, sometimes thanking them for their huge patience and professionalism.  Such periods of care call for you to build in care giving for yourself…treats for the long days, friends available by phone or tweet, trips to get away, meditation, readings, counseling sessions and other spiritual practices to center you. 

For some of us the care giving time is quite short.   A matter of a few months or even weeks or days.

Regardless of the length of time, these are life events, times that will be imprinted and remembered in our own life story.  Our reflections and the way we understand our story continue for months and years afterwards, really our whole lives long. 

When our parents are increasingly dependent upon us, it is a rite of passage for us, a turning of the wheel of life.  Someone upon whom we were once totally dependent and from whom we made some significant separation, is now relying on us, dependent upon us.  This is a sacred space to be in.  A heart space…it is a holy place, but a very complicated place.

I personally have never had the experience of a long, intense care giving period.  But I have watched and am watching some of you live through it and wonder and marvel at the care, concern and energy that you put to it. 

My story was one of a couple years of lighter care giving, followed by a month of intensity…Some of you have heard about my dad before…For years my father had taken prednisone to help him breathe. So many years… that if he had been told initially that this medicine would eventually result in deterioration of his bones and painful fractures, he didn’t remember.  I’m not sure it would have made any difference.  The medicine was essential to help him breathe…his lungs compromised from tobacco and auto body paint fumes.  Eventually he would also have to wear an oxygen tank 24 hours a day.  Movement around the house was very difficult.  Mom was the front line caregiver.  I visited them every few weeks.

Dad had always been very smart and hard working.   He was really handsome.  I could always see why my mother fell in love with him!  In his younger days he worked in the shipyards, the post office, auto body shops, and he also sold insurance for a time.  In his later years he fixed up wrecked cars in his home garage, selling them for a profit, including my first little Plymouth.  He took time each fall to go hunting for deer and elk.  One year my mom came home and found a deer in the bathtub!  In the summers he went fishing on charter boats out of Westport.  He was an active man, with a fabulous sense of humor.  And He loved my mom. 

The tragic part of his life was his addiction to alcohol.  He was adept at finishing off a quart of vodka in no time.  Quarts were stashed around his garage, under a fender here, in an old unsuspecting tool cupboard there.   The blessing of his last four years, was that he was sober; there was a consistency I could count on…his mind was clear and we could talk.  He didn’t slur his words, and he didn’t repeat himself.  He stopped drinking at age 70 for my mom.  I truly believe that. He didn’t do it for himself.  If it hadn’t been for her unhappiness, he would never have quit.  He missed drinking, and he missed his younger days of multiple pleasures.  

I believe our care giving begins with the recognition that a dear one’s life is gradually beginning to slip away, physically or mentally.  Our first act of caring may be just listening. 

To do that we need to arrive empty of expectations.  A full mind has no room to take in what someone is sharing.  This is my first spiritual lesson that I learned from my dad.

For one afternoon Dad seemed to want to talk.  I sat down in the dining room with him…and he began sharing how he felt.  He talked about his diminished life.  Because he could barely move around the house, he told me that he really didn’t have a whole lot to live for.  That was hard to hear; I remember wanting to say…”but Dad…”  but I kept my mouth shut and listened…this was his truth.  I could understand that.  It didn’t mean he didn’t love us; it was just that life was so hard and so limited.  Instead of protesting, though my heart was breaking, I told my dad “I hear you dad,”  He looked up at me with some surprise, and a tear came down his cheek.  We held hands in silence, …the touch of hands needs no spoken words.  For the next year I would come visit Dad regularly and just spend quiet time with him.  This quiet time, if we have the opportunity, can be a rich time for our loved ones to reflect on their lives…this time being primarily for them; for them to talk about whatever they want to…no agenda of our own.

So when he was suddenly rushed to the hospital with bones fracturing all over his body, a poor quality life became a kind of hell.  Pain management was the goal during the following three weeks, and the choice was pretty clear.  He needed more morphine, but more morphine would hasten his death.  The grave reality was numbing.   Limiting the morphine would extend his life…continuing to increase the morphine would shut his vital life systems down.  We knew what he wanted, mom and I.  We gave the doctor permission to increase it.  Our feelings would have to wait…just then we needed to companion dad.

We settled in to witness his journey out of this life.  We spent the afternoon each holding one of his hands.  Whispering to him our love, and our permission for him to go.  He left us sooner than we expected.  We thought he had 2-3 more days.  I guess he really was ready. 

It is such a rite of passage for each of us to lose a parent, and when the second parent dies, well that clearly moves us up to the font of the line.  I’m not in front yet.

Every death brings up our feelings from other deaths.  Each new grief combines with our prior losses.  Nine years later, in 2004 I found myself holding the hand of my beloved mentor Rev. Peter Raible who was dying…the minister you heard about last week if you were here, who ended his sermons always with “May we turn more to act than to word to declare our religion, Amen.”  Peter was a father figure to me, absolutely believing in me, giving me the unconditional approval that I needed…and so I know that as we speak of parents passing, it is not just our biological parents… deaths of parent substitutes and mentors have such a profound affect on our lives.   I was Peter’s medical power of attorney when he was in his last three days….so there I was responsible for his comfort and ethical care…again the wheel of life turning…he had birthed and raised me into Unitarian Universalism for 25 years, and then into its professional ministry…and now he lay clearly embarked on his last earthly journey…focusing more and more inward…

from those days with Peter I experienced the spiritual practice of reflecting on and expressing gratitude…  It seems to me that the ultimate blessing we receive from anyone is unconditional love, and when we have been so rarely blessed, and then are about to lose that person, the ultimate prayerful expression in response is “thank you.”   If you give such a blessing you have an opportunity to take your relationship to the heart place.  The last words I said to Peter were thank you.  I know he heard me.

Caring for our parents is always complicated, for their feelings and for our own.  With time, as the years roll on, whether our parents are still alive or not, it is possible to rewrite the story of our relationship with them…for the story we tell in our minds and its meaning, has so much to do with our thoughts and assumptions, formulated when we knew and understood much less about the challenges of living.   Being judgmental comes easier in those days… During the hours and months of caring for our parents we have the chance to open our hearts wide and be with them, offering unconditional caring. 

We can enter into their lives as they are now, seeking to understand how they are experiencing their changing days, practicing the spiritual discipline of non-judgment.  This isn’t always easy, in fact it never is, but particularly if they are feeling angry, depressed or out of sorts.  As they are changing you and your relationship with them is changing.

As I have aged I have come to know the complexities of life, through the compromises I have had to make, the imperfect decisions, the dashed hopes, sudden ends to dreams, relationships that become boring or abusive…but we do the best we can don’t we?    So I have been able to see my father and his imperfect relationship with me in a more understanding light.   We are all products of nature and nurture.  Conditions of our lives arise and have profound influences upon us.  Perhaps we have some free will, but we also are greatly conditioned by the circumstances of our lives. 

So another major spiritual lesson I continue to reflect on is respect…to respect my father for what he made of his life, despite difficult conditions, and particularly to forgive him for any flaws and faults. 

Simone Weil, the French mystic said that what we don’t have a whole lot of control in life, but what we do have control over is where we cast our gaze…where we cast our gaze…I have come to cast my gaze at Dad’s wonderful human qualities of humor, expressions of love, and dedication, and his ability to tackle his addiction so late in life…I take my gaze away from negative memories.  That’s my choice. 

To be wise is to not believe everything we think about something.  …To be wise is to NOT BELIEVE everything we think about something!  I think that recognizes how we often we form opinions in the absence of understanding and information.  The more we understand the humanity of our parents, the more we can feel close to them in our mutual humanity.   The more we can be non-judgmental, the more our hearts can open…This is true regarding anyone you are in relationship with.

It is also true that to be wise is to not believe everything you feel about something.   It is so easy to think dysfunctionally (such as “he always loved my brother more than he loved me”) with the direct result being dysfunctional feelings (sadness or anger).  When we change our focus we change our feelings.  My AA friends call it working on our stinkin’ thinking.  So that’s all about the spiritual lesson of learning where to focus your mind, where to set your gaze…

…

Times of long term care giving can be particularly exhausting when you have already lost the person you used to know as your mother or father, because their minds go to places that seem so unreal… but Buddhists would say that it is all illusion…so maybe they have just moved from one illusion to another…It is a chance for us to ponder what is reality.

A friend of mine went to visit her father who still lived at home with her mother…He was not doing too well, often going somewhere else in his mind, sitting very quietly and uncommunicative, and he definitely wasn’t cooperating with the program…maybe that sounds familiar to some of you.  His wife had fixed dinner and he refused to come or even answer the call to dinner.  Just then my friend Barbara stopped by…Her mother was exasperated…

”He won’t come to dinner…I fixed dinner and he won’t come.  He just sits in there.” 

Barbara went into her father’s room.  “Hi Dad” she said.  “Hi,” he replied.  “How are you Dad?” 

“I’m wonderful, Barbara, look at those beautiful butterflies flying around in here!”  “Oh Dad, yes, aren’t they beautiful,” she said.  “Shall we get our butterfly nets and see if we can bring them closer?”  “Yes,” he said…and so they swoshed their arms around in figure eights…

”how are you doing with your net dad, do you have any?”  “Yes, look, a pretty blue one and a yellow & blue one…”  “beautiful dad” as she continued swooshing…after a few minutes she said, ”shall we let them go now?”  Sure, he said turning his imaginary net upside down. 

“So Dad, after all that exercise, are you hungry? Because I am.”  “Yes” he replied…”Well what do you say we go have some dinner?”   “Ok honey, let’s go…I think your mom has supper ready!”

We don’t know what the journey out of this world is really like, but I think to be companions with our parents there may be times when we might just join in with them wherever they are…accepting where they are…we can’t control their journey…we can be their companions…and their reality is just as real to them as ours is to us…so another spiritual lesson is to let go of our need for normalcy as we know it, and just be in their world.  We are tempted to cling to what we want, but we must see and accept what is.  There may be a gift in that.

On another day this same father told his daughter “look at the guys outside raking up the pine needles!  They have a big job ahead of them!  And Barbara, looking out the window at a peaceful quiet yard devoid of any people, said gee dad, I need some help at my house, do you think a couple of them might come do some work for me?  Her father replied…”sure Barbara, but just remember, they are just in your mind…”

When someone is important to us, we treasure their blessing, and they treasure ours.  When our parents need our care, we offer our blessing to them in the several ways I have shared today:
By emptying our mind and being fully present to whatever sharing they wish to offer.
By expressing gratitude for their place in our lives, including their part in giving us the gift of this amazing mystery of life.
By making a decision to cast your gaze on what you admire and appreciate about them.
By joining them wherever they go, as we are able.

These are some of the spiritual lessons spiritual practices for times when we find ourselves caring for loved ones.  May those times be moments of enrichment, teaching us and reminding us what and who we love, and how we want to spend our one wild and precious life.

Amen and may it be so. 

Benediction:  Just to be is a blessing, Just to live is holy.  Abraham Heschel