Monday, March 25, 2013

Perspectives of the Aged

My Dear Grandmother: "What was it I was to yesterday? Was it a funeral or a wedding?"
Me: "Funeral."
My Dear Grandmother: "I get funerals and weddings mixed up."

I find this disturbing. Highly disturbing.   - Francis Graber


But it makes me wonder. Mom is 87 years old. Most of her friends and family are already in heaven. When she attends a wedding or a funeral she sits quietly, not hearing most of what is being said during the service or the afterward fellowship.  She watches  people from her place on the road. Her perspective has to be quite different from ours. So many things that we fret and worry over in our relationships and responsibilities do not even cross her mind. They are not relevant anymore.

If we were thinking, we'd spend a little more time visiting with her than we do. She might have wisdoms to offer. She is a lot closer to heaven than most of us and her thought patterns and words might actually reflect something of the knowing of that, like the first rays of dawn on the hills in the morning.I wonder if it is easier for her to distinguish between the really important things we should be doing and fretting and the petty things we waste our time on each day.

Maybe weddings and funerals are not so different as they seem. Both events mark a place in our personal eternities. Both of them bring together our most important loved ones to help in the pounding of a stake. Both of them are celebrations of life and living... at least for Christians.

I think Mom must see things that we fail to take into account at the moment.It must be kind of like standing at the last point of a line of segments in a straight line. Looking back across the line it is hard to tell which point is a baptism or a wedding or the death of a loved one. Each segment brings us a bit closer to that last point and it hardly matters at 87 what those points have been as long as they lead to heaven.


3 comments:

  1. Very good Mom, yes it makes sense. You should ask Grandma about it too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sharon from central WIMarch 25, 2013 at 9:22 PM

    Yes. I like this. I think us younger ones need to clue in more often that thinking about eternal perspective in life is the way to help us discern what the really important things are.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you for putting it so much better than I could/did.

    ReplyDelete

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