Severing the Symbols

Independence

Symbols of independence, such as working, housekeeping, or traveling, help our parents define who they are. What happens when old age takes away these symbols?

Mom and Dad Voorheis traveled from church to church in itinerant ministry for forty-four years in southern Michigan. Contrary to the options that ministers have today, they never owned a home of their own while serving a parish. Not only that, they served in an era when Free Methodist pastors still followed the pattern of early Methodism and moved every three years. So, in forty-four years they lived in fourteen different manses. Their daughter, Janet, who became my wife, remembers that she never stayed in a school more than two years between the second grade and her sophomore year in high school.

   In addition to the regular cycle of pastoral moves, the church conference elected her father to the traveling  superintendency twice in that period of time. During those stints as superintendent, the Voorheis family visited different churches every weekend. From Friday afternoon after school to late Sunday night after church, Janet

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spent her preteen years eating, sleeping, playing, and, most of the time, worshipping on the road. To the everlasting credit of her parents, however, Janet never knew the stigma of a traveling superintendent's kid without home. When I asked about those years without a permanent home, gratitude glowed in her eyes as she reflected, "I remember the mantel clock that we had in our home. Even though we moved from parsonage to parsonage during those years, whenever the mantel clock was in place, I was at home."

   Against this background, you can understand the depth of joy that filled her mother when Dad Voorheis bought the "dream cottage" in Spring Arbor, Michigan, for their retirement. The frugality of years paid off when he put down eight thousand dollars cash for a two-bedroom, white clapboard bungalow, located in the side yard of the college church where he had twice been pastor. They lived in the home for twenty-three years after retirement. Then came the call from the visiting pastor who warned us that Mom's attempts at cooking and Dad's efforts at maintenance endangered their home and their lives.

   Dad knew that the time had come to move to a retirement village. Mom's advancing senility, however, allowed for no such nonsense. She felt as if she were quite capable of managing the household and would not hear of anyone selling her home "out from under her." When we talked about the problem with Dad and with her, she sat unknowing in the fog of senility. Moments later, when the fog lifted just enough for her to get a fleeting sense of reality, she would cry out in pain, "What's going on? What are you doing to me?" For the first time in my memory, Mom Voorheis displayed an inner rage that contradicted her spirit of a lifetime. Years earlier, after I started dating her daughter, eating her food, hearing her pray at family devotions, and watching her minister in her home, I described her as a woman "who would have been a saint without salvation." Not that she was soft. On a couple of occasions, I saw her eyes narrow and watched her lips pinch tightly together when someone tried to take advantage of her husband or her daughter. Without raising her voice "Sister

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Voorheis" — the name of endearment given to her by parishioners — could settle an issue and bring strong men to silence with just a word.

   Senility lifted the lid on feelings Mom had never openly expressed. She spoke harshly to me once. After Dad gave me durable power of attorney and agreed that we should sell the family home, the folks moved into an apartment as the entry point in a three-tier life-care system. Daily meals, weekend cleaning, and periodic nursing checks were provided. When they could no longer function semi-independently, second-tier resident care with service would  follow until they needed third-tier bed care in the nursing home. To ease the trauma of transition, my wife and I purchased new furniture for the apartment, transferring only a few sentimental items, especially the mantel clock and their favorite chairs. Nothing satisfied. Mom and Dad Voorheis spent nine months of misery in the apartment. Even with their best friends above them, and lifelong ministerial colleagues around them in adjoining units, they found no joy in the new surroundings. As strange as it may seem, the misery ended when Dad fell and broke his back so that the two of them had to be moved into the same room together in the nursing unit. They were more content in their beds with constant care than they were in the apartment that represented their rupture from the cottage they called "home."

   A humorous incident first alerted us to feelings that Mom Voorheis had kept bottled up for years. Living in parsonages next to churches for forty-four years and retiring in the front yard of the Spring Arbor Free Methodist Church made the sound of the churchbell second nature to her. As a gentle way of giving the order "Let's get ready for church" to her family, Mom let the sound of the churchbell be the background for her upbeat, motivating word, "I can feel a little bell ringing in my heart when it's church time." Senility changed the meaning of the bell. During one of our Sunday visits to the nursing home, we planned to take Mom to her beloved church for morning worship. As Janet struggled to get her dressed and groomed, the bell that Mom had heard thousands of times began to ring. Picking up the sound, Janet spoke brightly, "Listen, Mom. Is a little bell ringing in

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your heart?" Her saintly mother scowled back, sliced her hand across her throat like a radio announcer signaling "Cut," and growled, at the same time, "I've had it up to here with church!" This was a Mom we had never known.

   A less humorous hint at Mom's hidden hostility came out one day when she and Dad were alone in the room. Without warning, mom grabbed Dad by the arm and yanked him out of bed with an angry yell, "Get up. There's nothing wrong with you!" Of course, Dad's broken back left him helpless. He crashed to the floor and lay there until the nurse came by. Mom had become dangerous in her senility, so the doctor ordered them separated. Dad soon required hospital care and died shortly after admission.

   Following Dad's funeral, where I preached and Mom sat without recognition or emotion, Janet and I decided to take her to a Bill Knapp's restaurant, where she and Dad ate regularly when he could still drive. As we drove out of town, a voice from the back seat thrust angry barbs at me, "What are you doing? Where are you going? You never tell me anything. You sold my home and now you're taking me away. I'll never go home again." I knew then what the house meant to Mom. For forty-years she had dreamed of the day when she would have a home of her own. For a quarter of a century she had lived her dream. As the wife of an itinerant minister moving from parsonage to parsonage for so many years, she felt the little house in Spring Arbor symbolized life itself. Senility in its advanced stages could not blot out the meaning of selling the home. She had lost a symbol of life.

Symbols of Life

Mom's outburst set me thinking about the other symbols of life that I had seen in our aging parents. Dad Voorheis had his own symbol. Perhaps again reflecting how little he owned as a minister on the move, he took special pride in his car. A ritual of washing, cleaning, and polishing, combined with the tender care of maintenance, left no

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doubt about the prize of his worldly possessions. The fact that Mom never drove and Dad never encouraged her to learn preserved the boundaries of Dad's domain. Like Spratt and his wife, he ruled the car; she ruled the house. They got along very well.

   At the age of eighty-two, Dad feared that he would fail the test for renewal of his driver's license. For days he fretted, and when the hour came, he broke out with a rash because of nerves. When he passed both the written and driving tests required for a person of his age, he acted like a teenager getting his first license. A long-distance telephone call informed us, a trip to the local post office spread the news around town, and to celebrate, he drove Mom to Bill Knapp's for dinner.

   Four years later, he met a reversal. Reaction time had slowed down until Dad knew that he could be a hazard on the road. In place of the old confidence behind his love for driving, emotional fears caused him to limit his driving to shakedown cruises around the block to keep his car in tune. With great reluctance, he confessed that he could not pass the driver's test again, and rather than being embarrassed he announced that he wanted to give his car to a local man who had been Dad's first convert during his first pastorate in Spring Arbor. The man had gone through a financial crisis and could not afford to buy a car of his own. How typical! The car that Dad wouldn't let me drive without extensive instructions became a generous gift for a person in need.

   Dad made a voluntary decision when he gave away his car. He himself said, "Now I'm ready for the nursing home." The driver's license symbolized a hold on life, not unlike Mom's house. With the license, he maintained a margin of independence, however small it may have been, that gave him a leverage upon life and reason to live.

   When I thought about my own mother's last days, I recalled an incident that illustrated her special symbol of life. As her leukemia became acute, she lost the use of her right leg. Most of the days during the last months were spent lying on the sofa. Persons who didn't know her might think that she was too weak to move. My sister and I knew better. Mom lay on the sofa to conserve her energy for church! Twice

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on Sunday and once on Wednesday night, a friend stopped by to pick her up for the services. Here is where a lasting image sticks in my mind. On my last visit to see her, my schedule required me to catch an airplane on Wednesday evening. "Will you drive me to church on the way to the airport?" Mom asked. She wore a blue coat with a grey fur collar. Ugly bruises marred her legs, and swollen feet wouldn't fit into regular shoes. I can see her now. Giving me a good-bye kiss, Mom insisted that she needed no help getting up the two steps to the front door of the white-pillared church. As I watched from the car, she leaned on the railing for a moment to muster strength, dragged her useless leg up one step at a time, leaned again on a white pillar, and shuffled toward the usher at the door — a gritty example of faith, wearing bedroom slippers to church.

   Church served my mother as the house served Mom Voorheis and the car served Dad Voorheis. More than independence hung these symbols. Once our parents lost the symbols, they virtually gave up on life itself. Why is there so much meaning in a single symbol? The answer comes with the recognition that, bit by bit, their hold on other symbols, which younger people take for granted, had been cut away from them — their work, travel, friends, freedom, money, health, and in the case of children who move from Michigan to Washington state, their family. No wonder they hung on to their last shred of independence. Life is living in small margins as it is. To see that margin narrowed down to one last symbol is a reality of aging which we never expect to happen.

   If I could relive those days with our parents, I would be more sensitive to the symbols of life. Each of us holds tightly to a number of symbols that establish our identity as persons — our career, position in the family, role in the church, community, organization or club, home, car, bank account, plans and priorities, travel, and health. On and on the list could go. As we age, however, those symbols of independence — interpreted as life itself — are lost, replaced, shifted, and simplified one at a time. Now I see how I might have helped enrich the old age of our parents. My understanding of the meaning

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of the symbols of life to them and my working through the changes with that understanding would have helped preserve meaning for them and deepened our relationship.

   In that context of understanding, I would also try to identify the vital symbol of independence for each parent. Our uniqueness as persons puts a premium on some symbol that gives us our independence. For my mother, the church preserved her personhood; Mom Voorheis hung on to her home; my Dad needed work; and "Brother Voorheis" needed a ministry. Long before retirement, the vital symbol of independence can be discovered in our parents. At present, for instance, I am writing this story on a yellow legal pad beside Lake Chelan, Washington. For me, writing is a vacation, and a yellow legal pad symbolizes my independence as a person. My children already have the hint. For my sixtieth birthday they put together a videotape spoofing the idiosyncrasies of Dad. You guessed it. The first frames of the hilarious and humiliating film show our youngest son sitting in a beach chain in swimming suit and sunglasses with a yellow legal pad on his lap and a black felt pen clenched in his teeth to provoke thought. I identify with that picture. Long after I retire, downscale homes, cease travel, and stop tennis, my pad will give me life. I hope that it is the last thing to go.

   We don't always get our wishes. If necessary, I would be ready to suggest substitute symbols of life for my parents. Retirement, although not usually a negative experience, is one of the symbols of life that may need a substitute for work when the time comes. For some, leisure may be enough of a substitute. For others, it will not do. My seventy-five-year-old insurance agent called me the other day with an idea for an annuity.

   "Kelly," I chided him, "You are supposed to be retired."

   "I was," he chuckled, "But after a month on Maui with only a lower golf score as my incentive, I came back to work."

   My own father had a similar experience. Retirement from work as an automotive engineer quickly bored him, so he got a part-time job as an usher at the spring training camp of a major league baseball

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team. By contrast, my wife's father retired to an honored role of pastoral patriarch for the village of Spring Arbor. With his role went the reverential title of "Brother Voorheis," which the citizens and students conferred upon him. While we cannot force substitute symbols of life upon our parents, we can anticipate their need for substitutes and encourage their pursuit.

   Yet again,when the relentless march of time takes its toll on the symbols of life for older people, I would try to help my parents hold on to the most vital symbols as long as possible.

   Mom's church, Dad's work, Mom Voorheis's home, and Dad Voorheis's car served as irreplaceable symbols. With the exception of my father's work, I see that they held them as long as they could. Is this part of the reason why Mom and Dad Voorheis lived into their nineties? If my mother had not contracted leukemia at the age of sixty-five, would she have followed her mother into the late eighties with the church as her life? She died early to be sure, but she also lived fully to the end.

   I don't know whether or not my father found a symbol of life as a substitute for work before his heart attack. Years later, a stranger heard the name "McKenna" and asked me if I had a relative in Florida who was a minister. "No," I answered. "My father retired in Sarasota, but he wasn't a minister." Coincidence after coincidence fell as the stranger pressed me for details. Finally he concluded, "Your father must have been the same man. He helped me when I was in trouble." To this day I want to believe that my Dad and that mysterious "minister" were one and the same person. Perhaps he found his substitute symbol.

   What happens when the last symbol of life is lost? From the experiences with our parents, I would shift emphasis from the symbol of independence to the symbol of security for their  final days. As the symbols of independence are eliminated one by one with advancing age, they are also simplified. We watched Mom and Dad Voorheis lose interest in their favorite pastimes, such as eating out, watching television, and visiting with friends. Toward the end of their long

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lives, meaning seemed to be limited to the next meal. In between meals, they subsisted — sitting, napping, and counting pills. When we realized that food represented their simplest pleasure, we did everything we could to ensure quality for their meals. Mom Voorheis could not be fooled. After she could no longer recognize her daughter, she could still taste with disgust a plate of instant potatoes and warmed-over meat. As simple as it seems, a home-cooked meal served as her symbol of satisfaction.

   Mom's need for security matched her need for simplicity in her final years. The loss of her home still obsessed her. When the doctor tried to reduce the drugs that kept her passive in the nursing home, she escaped the attendant's eyes, walked out the door, and wandered the icy streets without a coat. A long-time friend of the family picked her up and asked where she was going. Memory momentarily filled in the emptiness of her glazed eyes as she explained, "Home .. I want to go home."

   A heavy weight of guilt fell on my wife when she got the call from the nursing home about the incident. We had changed presidencies from Seattle Pacific University in Seattle, Washington, to Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. One of the compensating values of the move was to shorten the distance between Janet and her mother from twenty-five hundred miles to four hundred miles. Regularly, she drove north from Kentucky to Michigan where she would spend two or three days at a time with her mother. Now the question that haunted her dreams became the subject of a family discussion. "Should we bring Mom to Kentucky to live with us?" The doctor doubted the wisdom of a move because Mom's medication required a constant balancing act to keep her someplace between aggressive behavior and mindless existence.

   We compromised with an experiment. Mom would spend the Christmas holidays with us, the grandchildren, and great-grandchildren in Kentucky. If it worked out, a more permanent arrangement might be considered. The visit taught us the meaning of security for an aged person who had lost the last symbol of independence. Mom

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sat blankly in the back seat of the car on the drive to Kentucky. Occasionally she would cast some words into the air — "Where are we going? Who are you?" A preplanned stop at Bill Knapp's for her favorite meal of fried chicken, au gratin potatoes, biscuits and honey, custard pie, and coffee roused neither her interest nor her appetite.

   Things got worse when we arrived at home in Kentucky. Mom sank into a vegetative state. Christmas decorations went up, family arrived, carols were sung, presents were opened, and festive meals were served. Mom either stared at the happenings or slept through them. Her only response came when her medication began to wear off. Whoever stood nearby heard her snap, "Where am I? Who are these people? Take me home."

   Her reaction crushed Janet. She and her mother had been the closest friends — shopping, dining, talking, and praying together. Secretly, Janet had envisioned the day when she could bring mother to live with us in order to recapture those golden moments. The Kentucky experiment squashed her dream. For the first time, Janet realized that senility had take her mother from her. Mom needed the twenty-four-hour care and comfort of the nursing home. To impose a similar regime on our home and family would require a shift in priorities from our public role as president and first lady of the seminary. Our teenager son, with his demanding schedule of church and athletic events, would also have to accept the change. Does this sound selfish? Perhaps it is, but there is another question: What would Mom want? Her nature would always answer, "I had my day. Now it's yours. Make the most of your ministry."

  Another question is less selfish: What does Mom need? The surroundings and schedule of the nursing home gave her security. The place she feared and resisted had become her home. To put her into the chaos of our family in Kentucky with its nonstop teenage traffic, flexible meals, intermittent travel, and unscheduled guests would have been unfair to her. Reluctantly Janet drew her conclusions: "It'll never work. Mom needs to go home." During the drive back to Michigan, Mom never said a word. When we arrived at the nursing

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home and took her to her room, she collapsed into her easy chair with a sigh of relief. A minute later, she left us at the sound of a bell. She was home, and dinner was ready. Mixed with our guilt, we felt good. Mom felt better. Security had replaced independence as the symbol of life.

An Unanswered Question

In our case, the ravages of senility settled the question of Mom Voorheis living with us. For others whose parents are in the uncertain time of transition between living alone and needing care, the Mayo Clinic had produced a report that recommends another set of questions that must be asked. Although the report is written form the perspective of an aging parent who is invited to live with children, the same questions need to be asked from the perspective of a son or daughter who must decide whether or not to bring Mom or Dad home to live.

1. Does  your mother or father really want to live with you? Do you want them to live with you?

2. Can you afford to have them live with you?

3. How easily can your mother or father adapt to your family's lifestyle and you to theirs?

4. Will your mother or father feel like a visitor in your home?

5. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your relationship with your mother or father? Is it comfortable? Compromising? Emotionally strained?

6. Can your mother or father continue to pursue the hobbies he or she enjoys?

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7. Can your mother or father keep in touch with friends while living with you?

8. How much time does your mother or father expect to spend with you? If home alone during the day, will he or she feel bored, isolated, or depressed?

9. Will your mother or father have a separate room? How much personal space will your parent need?

10. Can your mother or father bring along a favorite chair? Are there stairs to climb?

11. Can your parent keep a car and driver's license? Is she or he willing to ride the bus? Or is she or he dependent upon you for transportation?

12. Can your parent help with cooking, cleaning, gardening, or other chores? Will he or she want to? Will you let him or her?

13. Will your mother or father need help with personal care? If so, is the family willing to accommodate these needs?

14. Can your mother or father help with household expenses? Do you need this help?

15. Can your parent still manage financial affairs? If not, are you willing to assume this responsibility?

   Even these  questions fall short of a final answer. Two faculty colleagues stopped me in the hall after learning that I was writing this book. Each of them has an elderly mother living in his home. Smiling but serious, they said, "You need to interview us about living with an

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aging parent. Our stories would make a book in itself." After hearing a sample of those stories from each of them, I realized that they were right. The questions of the Mayo Clinic cannot anticipate the surprises that await both adult children and aging parents who live together under the same roof. For those stories, this book needs a sequel entitled Chronic Care for Aging Parents.

Chapter Five  ||  Table of Contents