I have a garden to tidy. I am no gardener: I bought a very small plot of land with a small area in part because I know this. Unlike many here, I would live happily in an apartment. But next weekend my parents (God willing) visit. And though they say we should not fuss, we will.
We should honour our parents. The Pro Photog and I are fortunate: our parents are still alive. And as we talk about the future we think of how to care for them. THe idea of putting people in an old age ghetto repels. For if we delude ourselves that we do not need their wisdom, our children surely do.
In our society we have taken the idea of caring for our family, commercialized it and regulated it, and then put the financial burden back on families. If you have money, the state will claw it back until you do not. And if you care for your own, you will be still taxed for those who have not.
Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,
“‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God)—then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”
(Mark 7:1-13 ESV)
Terry is quietly working through the death of her father and writes that grief is something real, something that will come to all of us, and of the life that her father lived.
It was well known how much we admired and depended on our father. Being motherless for several years, the matriarchal dynamic commonly associated with American families -and black families in particular- was quite foreign us. Our father was everything. As a result many people expressed incredulity that my siblings were able to keep it together enough to speak. I was not among them (I was angry with God and Daddy that first week), but I know why my siblings who spoke -and sang- were able to do it.
Our father was well acquainted with grief. I don’t mean in the typical ways which most of us expect to encounter death; our grandparents, our parents which many of us start to lose as we approach middle age, etc. No, my father’s life had been rocked by grief from a very early age. He lost his father when he was 5 years old, then his mother when he was 17. He lost three siblings, followed by a 9-year-old daughter, his 30-year-old wife when he was 40, three more siblings, and then a son 5 years ago.
He learned early on that grief is just part of life’s journey. The pain is real and deep but he taught us that it is greatly mitigated when you know that your love for your loved one was more than just lip service. When you did what you could, even when it was hard, to extend love and fulfill your duty, your grief will be accompanied by peace.
Were there things that went unsaid? There always are when you think you have more time. We human beings are silly that way. But there is not even a hint of doubt in our minds that our father knew his wife and children loved him, and that very dearly.
It is our duty and privilege to shield our parents as their strength fades. Which in my family, in the last few generations, happens late. My father was sprinting after bulls into his late seventies and still teaches in his eighties. One grandfather died a little earlier, but one was fixing wiring in the roof in his mid eighties. The difficulties that Terry mentions are real, and affect some families: mine has its pain, but we are all, so far, still alive.
However, the Pharisees will rise up and damn us. Jesus confronted them on their traditions of giving what should have been kept for the family to the temple. But they did not shut up their children. They did not try to manage the hard parts of life: to kill the frail, the elderly, and the inconvenient. Places with assisted suicide do this: places with abortion do this, and this has gone from terminal illness and pain to those who suffer, those who are handicapped. We are reliving the 1930s, complete with Zyklon B, but in Oregon and the Netherlands.
It is far better that we do our duty and honour our parents. Are they flawed? Yes. But are any of us perfect. So let us pray for them, and help them, and honour them. For in the end people alone will be in the life to come. Our inconveniences, our nations, our possessions and our concerns have term limits or expiry dates.
Concentrate on those things which will last.
UPDATE
Terry put this up.
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