There is a certain truth that with age comes wisdom. The importance of understanding this is based on what decisions we make based on our state of mind and in what condition our life is in. The comic relief and sadness about what we do is centered around what we remember or do not.
Common to most of us are such areas as walking into a room and trying to remember why we did. Or we are thinking about something, and we were interrupted and forgot what it was. Names and dates once easy and prominent to our mindset, come up in a most peculiar way when we are doing an unrelated action.
These I refer to as periods of annoyance. I now realize I can no longer be a contestant on Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune. There are more serious aspects of forgetfulness in areas of dementia or Alzheimer's. I have a relative and friend whose wives are in facilities because they no longer remember the life, they lived nor the people they once held dear to themselves.
The feedback from them and another friend who recently lost his wife is about the loneliness they feel from sharing life with someone they committed to for as long as they both should live. Those who have wives in facilities experience a living death because they can still spend time with them, even though the wives may no longer recognize the person to whom they are married.
Another aspect of this is having a spouse who is ill and the other who has become a caregiver. Life as they once knew it has certainly affected how to live it causing each to adapt to what they are able to do versus what they want or could do. Making plans to cope with incapacitation often frustrates them as they often must cancel times like they once enjoyed in the past.
All the
above situations make it difficult to cope with life, especially when God is
present. The tendency is to be angry and to blame God at times for what has
happened especially when there is a good connection between God and creation. The
scariest aspect of all of this as written earlier is what decisions are we
making to be the best we can be in the eyes of God.
Though I
speak from a man’s perspective, I have learned from women, especially my wife,
that the life we have been given is worth living it to the fullest. As
difficult as our situations may be, as baptized Catholic Christians who
practice our faith, we trust that the purpose for which we are created is to
still trust in God’s truth because He is the creator. Love is the center of our
life, and we must use it in everything we attest to, whether it be good times
or not.
I must believe that the spouses who are disconnected from their spouse in mind and/or body would not want them to give up. We promised to be with one another no matter what the circumstances as long as we both live.
If we did not realize what we were promising to one another at the time of our marriage, we certainly are now aware in a time of crises. The expectation, therefore, is to be there for one another because we gave a promise to ourselves and to God. That is how we adapt to God’s ways every day of our life.
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