IT WILL BE WORTH IT ALL

Aunt Betty's fingers move gracefully across the keys of the piano as my mom, my dad, my grandma "Abuela" and I huddle around the shared hymnal. I've requested one last "hymn-sing" with my dad's sister Betty before she leaves in the morning to go home to Missouri. She's been visiting us for a week, and it's been so refreshing to have her cheerful presence here. I love to hear her play the piano, all the old hymns that you rarely hear anymore.

Oft times the day seems long, our trials hard to bear...

Holding the hymnal with my left hand, I run the index finger of my right hand under the words for Abuela to follow along. I can tell she is fading. It's the end of the day and she's almost ready for bed. Abuela taps her foot slightly and nods her head a bit with the tempo. But singing seems to be too much of an effort.

...We're tempted to complain, to murmur and despair...

What an appropriate song for Abuela. She has plenty of reason to complain. Several strokes that have left her right side weakened and forced her to become left-handed. A fading memory and a brain that gets muddled and confused with everyday details of life. Recent surgery to put two pins into the broken bones of her right hip, leaving her unable to stand or get up out of bed on her own. Yet she never complains. She always downplays her pain or difficulties with, "It's not so bad," or "I'm just plugging along."

But Christ will soon appear, to catch His bride away, All tears forever over, in God's eternal day.

Abuela's warming up to the song now a bit. I'm singing loudly in her ear, squeezing her hand occasionally and smiling at her encouragingly.

"You can sing with us, Abuela. You know this part!" I say quickly before we begin the chorus.

It will be worth it all, when we see Jesus

Her lips are moving now. I lean in close to hear her voice.

Life's trials will seem so small, when we see Christ

She's even singing the alto part! My mom and I smile at each other as we hear her. I want to record this moment firmly in my memory.

One glimpse of His dear face, all sorrow will erase

A hidden blessing of Abuela's short-term memory loss is that she doesn't remember that she fell and broke her hip last month. She doesn't remember her trip in the ambulance, or her stay in the hospital, or the pain after the surgery. She's cheerfully unaware of any reason to be unhappy. Those painful memories have been erased.

What a beautiful picture of the ultimate erasing of sorrows when we get to heaven. I can just imagine my sweet Abuela, who has served her Jesus whole-heartedly, uncomplainingly her whole life, gazing at her Savior face-to-face at last, joined by her faithful husband who went ahead of her several years ago, and others of her family who are already there. Why worry about minor things like broken bones and weakened limbs on this earth? When we reach the beginning of forever, I don't think we'll even remember those things anymore. They won't be important.

So bravely run the race, till we see Christ.

The chorus ends and Aunt Betty does a final trill of notes on the piano. Abuela smiles.

"That's a great song, isn't it?" I ask. She nods. I feel so privileged to be sitting here next to my grandmother who has served the Lord for the past century. The words of the hymn say it so well. This is what she lives for. And this is what I want to live for. Because it IS worth it all. When we are living for Jesus, it's always worth it.

A DAY IN THE PARK WITH ABUELA

We went for a walk today with Abuela (my grandmother). It was a gorgeous day today - I heard reports that it was 81 degrees! The sun was shining, there was a warm breeze blowing, and it certainly didn't feel like February weather. So we decided to get out of the house. My aunt and I got Abuela ready - sunglasses, hair fixed, tissues on hand - and then we took turns pushing her wheelchair the few blocks from our house to the park by the lake. We'd brought along stale bread for the ducks, if we saw any.

We finally found some ducks on the second wooden bridge along the path that cuts through the middle of the park. There were about six of them, lingering in the cool shade of some overhanging branches along the water's edge. But they came swimming right up when they saw us approaching. These ducks know that people often mean food.

Abuela was quite entertained by the ducks. I positioned her wheelchair at an angle close to the railing, so she could toss in small pieces of bread that I tore off for her. Splashing and diving, the ducks competed for the crumbs, to our great amusement.

My mom arrived after a few minutes. She had picked up our almost-99-year-old neighbor Elva, who's my grandma's buddy, and driven her to the park. Elva can walk with a cane quite well, but gets winded after a bit and has to rest on a park bench for a few minutes. When my grandma saw Elva, her eyes lit up. "Well, hello there!" she smiled, as Elva bent over to kiss grandma on the cheek. Then Elva asked if she could push grandma's wheelchair. "It helps me to have something to push," she explained, "like a shopping cart. It keeps me steady."

What a sweet sight that was, our 99-year-old neighbor pushing my 100-year-old grandmother down the path in the park, heading back home.

DOING DISHES WITH ABUELA

Abuela had that look after dinner. In the weeks following the surgery for her broken hip, my one-hundred-year-old grandmother has become increasingly bored and restless. Though her injury confines her to a wheelchair, Abuela still wants to be useful and help around the house. And in the three years she's lived with my family, the dishes have consistently been her "job."

Maneuvering the wheelchair into position was tricky. But with me standing at the sink and Abuela's chair angled between the sink and the dishwasher, we came up with a partnership system that worked pretty well. I rinsed the dishes and silverware, then handed each item to Abuela so that she could find a place for it on the racks of the machine. It took some time, but we eventually filled the dishwasher and started the cycle. Then I tackled some of the bigger items - pans and serving bowls, or the rubber spatulas and wooden spoons that we usually wash by hand. Abuela meticulously dried each dish, a towel on her lap to catch the drips. Then as I put away the dried dishes and wiped down the sink and countertops, Abuela carefully hung her dishtowels over the edge of the sink to dry, her practiced fingers smoothing out every bump and wrinkle.

Even though multiple strokes and dementia have eaten away at my sweet grandmother's short-term memory, there are some things she will never forget. Washing dishes must be one of those things, like riding a bicycle or tying your shoes. Gertrude Elizabeth Dudte, my grandmother, was raised on a farm in Newton, Kansas. Washing dishes was something she probably did from the time she could stand on a chair or a stool and help her mother and sisters in the kitchen. She's been washing dishes for about ninety years!

Recently our family doctor asked Abuela, "So, are you still doing the dishes and folding the laundry?" Abuela seemed surprised at the question. "Of course," she answered, as if he had been asked her if she's still eating three meals a day. "It's my job."

SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT

I've heard mothers of new babies talk about checking to see if their baby is still breathing in the middle of the night if it's too quiet. You tiptoe over to the crib, lean over, and peer in the darkness to see if the tiny chest is still rising and falling. You strain your ears for the barely audible whisper of the breathing in and out. Then you release a sigh of relief and crawl back into bed, amazed at the miracle of this tiny life, sleeping there so soundly, unaware of all the emotions he is stirring in the adults in his world.

Last night, lying on the cot in my 100-yr-old grandmother's room at night, at first I was keenly aware of every sound she made in the bed just a few feet away. I was taking a turn to do night duty, making sure that Grandma didn't get up on her own during the night with her recently-operated-on hip and fall. My mom usually has the task of night watch. So I wasn't accustomed to all the groans and creaks of the mattress springs, the whiffling snoring, or the rustling of the sheets as she moved in bed. Every once in awhile I would stiffen, my senses on high alert at a new sound, trying to perceive whether I needed to get up and investigate. A couple of times she seemed to stop breathing for a couple of seconds, and I would hold my breath anxiously until I heard the steady rhythm start up again.

But an amazing thing happened last night. A miracle actually. Grandma never got up during the night. Not even once. Often Mom and Dad will be up with her 3, 4 or 5 times a night, helping her out of bed and onto the toilet and back again. Usually it seems it's just restlessness, discomfort, or agitation that makes her want to get up, rather than an actual need. But the doctor has prescribed a new medication that is working wonders. It seems to help her relax and feel more comfortable. And for the first time in the weeks since she fell and broke her hip, Grandma is actually sleeping through the night!

Yet somehow the lack of activity last night made me a bit more uneasy. It was too quiet. Something wasn't right. I lay there in the dark, listening for noises, wondering if everything was OK. Did I just not hear her? Is she trying to get up? I couldn't really see in the darkness of the room, and a couple of times I imagined that I could see her shadowy figure starting to sit up in bed. Once or twice I used the glow of my cell phone to sweep across the bed and ensure that all was indeed well.

And, miraculously, all was indeed well. She was still breathing. She was sleeping peacefully. And finally I was able to relax enough to sleep too.

A friend recently told me of the celebration she and her husband had when their baby slept through the night for the first time. It seemed strange, surreal to not be waking up every few hours to feed a crying baby. And the first few nights the parents couldn't really sleep. They kept listening for that cry to rouse them out of bed. But eventually they started getting used to the silence. What a wonderful thing. I think I could get used to it too.

PUT ON A HAPPY FACE

Maybe I need to stop being so positive.

When we were growing up, my brothers used to tease me about my "just smile and be happy" outlook on life. "Why can't we all just hug and be friends?" they would chime, in an over-the-top sugary voice with a plastered grin. Then they would try to convince me that I was unrealistic and that life wasn't that simple.

In those days I was obsessed with big yellow smiley faces, the kind they have on Wal-mart's "Low prices everyday" signs over bins of pencils and cans of green beans and other things that I didn't know I needed until I see that they're ONLY $1.99 each! Those yellow smileys became my trademark in my early twenties. I had a smiley keychain, a foam smiley-face ball on the top of my car's antennae, and huge round sun shades with yellow smileys to keep my dashboard cool in the summer.

Now that I think about it, I don't think I chose any of those smiley items for myself. Friends started getting them for me, and then somehow it became known that Michelle liked yellow smiley faces. Maybe it's because I always put little smiley faces at the end of emails or letters. Or maybe it's just because I smile a lot! I remember once in an English Composition class at the community college, a concerned classmate asked me when I walked in, "What's wrong, Michelle?" Taken aback, I said I was fine. "But you're not smiling," he persisted. "And you're ALWAYS smiling. So something must be wrong!"

I think I'm naturally a "glass-half-full" optimist. But I wonder how much of my always having a cheerful expression is a learned behavior. As the oldest child, as the daughter and grand-daughter of missionaries, I've often felt pressure (real or imagined) to keep up a certain image, to look like I have it all together.

Over the last three years I've been involved in the long-term 24-hour care of my centenarian grandmother - through the ups and downs of strokes, emergency room visits, hospitalization, home health care, physical therapy, and middle-of-the-night assistance for bathroom use. "I could never do what you guys do," countless people have told me and my family, shaking their heads. "You have such a gift for this." Or they say, "Well, God must know you can take it, 'cause He won't give you more than you can handle!"

That's when I start thinking that maybe I'm a little bit too cheerful and optimistic. And I wonder if I'm unintentionally giving the impression that I have it all together when I don't. Maybe I shouldn't always smile and say "We're fine" when people ask how things are going with grandma.

Because often I feel like I'm not handling it all very well. I get stressed. I get irritable. I get grumpy. And the truth is, I don't think I have a particular gifting for caregiving. (I don't remember that being one of the spiritual gifts listed in my Bible). My DNA isn't unique among the human race, allowing me supernatural strength and grace and patience for the particular challenges of caregiving. Neither is the rest of my family specially trained and perfectly suited for this particular season of life. We just do it because that's where we are right now. And you would do the same if you were in our shoes. Just like you take a deep breath, square your shoulders, and face the particular challenges of your life every day.

But I guess that doesn't mean I should stop smiling. I'm trying to learn when and where it's appropriate to humble myself and admit when I'm not doing very well and need help. It's true that God does give us the grace we need for each moment. That's the difference between happiness, which is based on circumstances, and JOY, which comes from the security of trusting in God's sustaining power. So though I don't have to feel pressure to "put on a happy face" just to keep up appearances, I know that in THIS moment, and in the NEXT moment, and in the NEXT moment, He will give me the joy of the Lord if I ask for it, which is my strength. And THAT's reason to smile!

CONFESSIONS OF THE SLEEP-DEPRIVED

I've discovered that it really IS possible to survive on only three or four hours of sleep a night, but it does strange things to your brain.

I'm a person who requires a lot of sleep, at least 8-10 hours a night. 12 hours would be even better. Even when I was in college, I could never pull all-nighters. Though I confess I did have a bad habit of procrastinating, but no amount of pressure to cram for midterms and finals could keep my eyes open past 1 am. After my forehead hit the page of my Political Geography book one too many times, I would finally give in and crawl into bed for a few hours of shut-eye, setting my alarm for 4 am to continue cramming.

How do mothers of newborns do it? I've often wondered. How in the world can they keep going day after day on the minimal snatches of sleep they get in between middle-of-the-night feedings and diaper changes? I would never make it.

But our bodies have an incredible capacity to go beyond what we think we can handle. Over the last few weeks since my 100-year-old grandmother fell and broke her right femur at the hip socket, requiring hospitalization and surgery to put in two pins, my family has been in crisis-mode, running on little more than adrenalin and desperate prayers. "Abuela", as I call her (the Spanish word for grandmother), now requires 24/7 intensive care. It started in the hospital, where my parents and my brother and I took turns doing shifts with her to answer the doctor's questions and make sure she got what she needed. "Sleeping" is a relative term when the activity takes place in a reclining chair in a hospital room with all the beeps and whirrs and flashing lights of the machines, and nurses and aides coming in every couple of hours to take blood pressure and check her pulse. Trying to work a normal day after a night shift at the hospital was like stumbling around with sandbags tied to my legs, blindfolded and with earplugs, in a thick fog, though which I could barely see and hear fuzzy shapes of people-like-figures that seemed to be attempting to communicate with me in some East African tribal language. My eyelids seemed to be extremely sensitive to the pull of gravity, and my mouth had this embarrassing tendency to fall open as I stared blankly at the person talking to me.

I can understand why sleep deprivation is used as torture in some countries.

Now Abuela is home again. But this means that it's up to my parents, my brother and me, plus a couple of friends who help out a few times a week, to monitor her every minute of the day to ensure that she doesn't try to stand or walk on her injured right leg, which would most likely crumple and the bone would shatter if she tries to put weight on it. But Abuela's dementia causes her to forget that she's injured and try to get up on her own several times a day and during the night. So we're all on high-alert all the time. Usually my mom does the night shift on a cot in Abuela's room to help her get from the bed to the toilet and back again. But I try to help out when I can to give my mom a break. The nights I've done night duty I haven't slept more than three or four hours. I hear every shifting and turning in the bed and my ears are perked for that particular sound of her trying to get out of bed, at which point my whole body jumps into attentive focus to deal with the situation.

But even when she's still I have a hard time relaxing, and end up having stressful dreams about toddlers wandering dangerously close to the edge of a steep cliff with no railing, beyond which is a sheer drop-off of thousands of feet, and I am the sole person responsible for the children's safety. I wake up more exhausted than before I drifted off.

Yet somehow we keep going. Of course there are days when I can sleep in or take naps to catch up for lost sleep. And most nights I get plenty of sleep, so I can't really complain too much. But I'm clinging to that verse that says "He gives His beloved sleep" (Psalm 127:2). I appreciate a full night of uninterrupted sleep more than ever. And the next time I see a mom of a newborn baby, I'm going to give her a hug.

EATING CRACKERS WITH A SPOON

“You can use your fingers to pick that up, Abuela.” I tried to intercept my 100-year-old grandmother's attempt to scoop up a Ritz cracker with tuna onto her spoon.

“It's OK to use your fingers to eat it. The spoon won't work very well.” Seeming not to hear me, my Abuela (grandmother in Spanish) continued to slide the cracker around the plate on the tip of her spoon, intent on her task. Finally I had to gently remove the spoon from her hand and place the cracker between her thumb and forefinger. “It's much easier this way! You can just eat it with your fingers.”

She looked at me a bit blankly, smiling weakly. But she quietly ate the cracker and tuna. Yet not more than twenty seconds later, she was once again chasing another cracker around the plate with her spoon.

Sighing, I tried to keep my voice cheerful. “You can just pick that up with your fingers, Abuela. It's much easier to eat it with your fingers.” This process was repeated at least six times – once for every cracker on her plate.

After about cracker number four, I was ready to confiscate the spoon AND the crackers. This was going to be a long meal.

Multiple strokes over the last few years and creeping dementia cause Abuela to revert to child-like behavior at times. When I'm getting frustrated with having to remind her something for the umpteenth time, I think about all she's lived through in the last century. Raising five children in Cuba, Spain and Morocco. Serving in missions with her husband on three continents. A faithful wife for over 60 years until my grandpa went to be with Jesus in 2004. A grandmother of seventeen, and a great-grandmother of eighteen.

How many nights has Abuela rocked her children and grandchildren to sleep on her lap? How many lives has she touched with her organ and accordion music in church services, or with her services as a capable secretary and accountant, or by her gentle smiles and encouraging words, or with her biscuits and roast beef and rhubarb pies cooked with love? My grandmother is a remarkable woman, and it's a privilege to care for her in the sunset years of her life. And if she wants to use her spoon to try to pick up her Ritz crackers, why shouldn't she? At 100 years old, she's earned the right to eat her crackers and tuna however she wants to!