Loading...I went to visit my parents last weekend. It was a just-long-enough visit where the fish didn’t begin to smell, if you know what I mean. No overstayed welcome, short enough to refrain from getting irritated by quirks and word choices. Long enough to check in on how they are getting along without trying to express my opinions on ways they could live in a household with dementia.
My 87-year-old mom was diagnosed a year ago, and my 93-year-old dad does what he can to provide as much normalcy as he can, while slowly taking on a few things that will keep them both safe and secure, like driving my mom places, and cooking some meals, even though for my whole life he has said he “didn’t get married to cook.” His love for my mom is showing in ways I would have never anticipated even two years ago.
While she sometimes forgets and repeats herself, mom knows what is important to her and seems to remember those things. She also seems to be visiting her childhood more frequently, or memories decades old. She talks about her parents and others who have long since died, keeping their memories alive. Nostalgia is to be expected, and I’m thankful to be on the receiving end, learning a little more history about her life.
My dad holds onto the deaths of people in his life, almost clinging to the pain of loss, grieving loudly. His agony is sometimes bewildering to me, because he lingers in the deaths of these beloveds and sometimes, it seems, cannot or does not live in the present joy with today’s beloveds, preferring, it seems, to focus on his deep sense of loss.
They live on property they bought years ago—land that was his mother’s family farm—nestled between two bluffs on the Minnesota side of the Mississippi River, which we can see from one of the tops of those bluffs.
My dad’s mother was born and raised on this land. When they married, his parents built a house there, starting their family, until tragedy struck and his mother died, unexpectedly, after a medical procedure, at age 30. My dad was 6. His dad packed up the two boys and left the land, bereft, in grief, moving to town.
This land is filled with wonderful memories made throughout my life. But it also holds a lot of my dad’s grief and trauma, which is sometimes nearly paralyzing for my family.
I feel, sometimes, that I’m living my parents’ farewell discourse these days. They are busy sharing stories and plans and expectations for their beloved property. Having been born during the Great Depression, my parents have collected a lot of “stuff” that holds value for them in a variety of ways. Much of that value comes from their own memories, their own experiences, and sometimes there really is financial value.
Their sense of what is important is very different than mine or my two brothers. And we are each handling our parents’ behavior, attitudes, and beliefs about their “stuff” in our own ways.
Yet this time, this tender time, is ours for saying farewell. We know that each of our days are numbered, and because they are as old as they are (which they never thought could happen) each encounter with them contains a variety of emotions, not the least of which is anticipatory grief for their deaths, and anxiety over what we are going to have to do with all their “stuff” when they are gone.
Jesus is offering his farewell discourse to those disciples left in the room after feet have been washed and bread and wine have been shared. He’s too young for them to think this is his way of telling them goodbye, but that is exactly what is happening in this upper room.
It is in these chapters between the holy meal and the walk to the Garden of Gethsemane for prayer and ultimately his arrest, when Jesus gives his followers some of the most important words they need to hear:
You are loved.
Love one another.
Do what I have taught you to do.
Continue the path we have walked.
Your work is not done.
He also tells them that he won’t be with them, at least not in the way he has been so far. He tells them he is going to be tortured and put to death, but that death is not the end of his relationship with them.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells them that the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, will come to each of them. This Spirit will help them remember when they forget and will give them strength when they are weak. This Spirit will remain with them as if Jesus were still walking the road with them.
He tells them this, so that they will believe him when he comes to them in that locked upper room and offers them “Peace” and blows the Holy Spirit into them.
Of course they do not fully comprehend any of this, even when it happens. It will be more apparent, 50 days after his resurrection, on the day of Pentecost. They will understand better in each encounter they have: where words they were afraid to say are spoken with confidence; where people are healed by their prayer and their touch; and where more and more people come to follow this Way of Jesus: the way of love and compassion for all humanity.
I think about how my mom is revisiting her past relationships with her parents and brothers, friends, and other relatives who have died. I think about how my dad holds tightly to memories of his parents, siblings, family, and friends. And I consider how I encounter the people I have lost. In some ways, their spirits, their memories, continue to impact how we each live our lives.
My maternal grandpa was a house painter. Whenever I paint a room, I ask him for support and guidance.
My maternal grandma loved bright colors and gardening. When I’m painting a room, I ask her if she likes my color palate. When I plant and tend a garden, I think about how she nurtured her plants, harvested, canned, and cooked from her bounty. I choose to plant flowers I think she would like and know that I want a peony plant because it will remind me of her.
I think about how my mom’s brother held me in his arms as I wept in the cemetery when my dad’s father died and know that memory impacts how I minister families at the time of a loved one’s death.
Then there is the memory of how my dad’s youngest brother would have done anything to protect me, and I know some of my fierceness to protect others comes from him.
Because of the ways I respond to just some of the people who have influenced my life, I don’t think it is too hard to believe that Jesus would talk about the Holy Spirit and tell those who follow him, then and now, that the ways we choose to live and act will be impacted by the Spirit.
I believe it is because of the Holy Spirit that I can see how bound we are with one another and with creation.
That binding is what guides us to act in ways that express the love Jesus taught us. The Holy Spirit is the one who nudges us so we will see others as beloved children of our Creator. The Advocate helps us to act in ways that respect dignity, strive for justice, proclaim the word, live the examples, and seek to serve one another because of our love for God and our relationship with Jesus.
Jesus says in this farewell discourse that he will always abide with his followers. It is through the Holy Spirit that he abides with us.
While we may think that with death comes abandonment, Jesus reminds us that it is through his death we will become more bound to him. Bound because we have learned what love looks like—not through his death on a cross—but instead, love looks like caring for and loving the world which God created. It is through these actions that we express our commitment to loving God, in our willingness to accepting a relationship that is deep and sustaining. Through the Holy Spirit it is possible for us to walk in the world, doing the work we have been given to do.
When we accept that God abides with us, when we know that Jesus has given us the tools necessary to walk in love, and when we recognize how the Holy Spirit walks alongside us, reminding, guiding, leading us, we will know and understand that we become the hands and feet of Jesus, to continue his work in this world.
I’m thankful for the spirits of my ancestors and for the ways they show up in my life. But I am abundantly grateful knowing that the Holy Spirit was sent to provide comfort and direction to the early followers of Jesus, so they were able to continue the work of God, leading the way. And that the Holy Spirit has never left.
May we all feel the abiding presence of God in our lives. Amen.
