VISITING AUNT FRANCES IN ASSISTED-LIVING

   My Uncle Fred and Aunt Frances Crain are pictured when they were fairly young. 

  My Aunt Frances, 94, born in 1927, lives at Spring Park, an assisted-living place in Travelers Rest, SC.

When my late wife, Carol, and I moved from Southern Pines, NC, to Taylors, SC, in Jan. 2018, Aunt Frances Hawkins Crain and her husband, Uncle Fred E. Crain, already lived at Spring Park. They’d left their Silver Ridge subdivision in Greer, SC, where they lived for years, because of Aunt’s Alzheimer’s. They had no children.

Uncle Fred (my late father’s only sibling) chose to live in the memory-care wing because he figured that if he died, Aunt would be adjusted to the memory-care hall and could live on there by herself without having to be transferred into memory-care and enduring stressful readjustment. He could have chosen to live in the regular wing with Aunt because he could have looked after her there, but he chose the memory-care area. He later said he wished he had chosen to live in the regular wing because he was lonely in the memory-care wing, surrounded by dementia-affected residents, some hugging and “caring for” children’s babydolls.  

In November 2021, I drove to see Aunt on a Friday morning and phoned from the memory-care wing door to the front desk in regular-care. Two days earlier, I arranged a 10:30 appointment — something needed because of COVID-19. 

“Hello, Spring Park. May I help you?” a young lady said. 

“Hi. I’m here for my appointment to see Aunt Frances Crain. I’m her nephew, Steve Crain,” I said. 

I donned my mask and waited for a young lady aide who opened the door. I signed in between the outside door and the locked door to the memory-care wing.  

“She’s in the sitting area,” the young woman said. “I’ll get her for you.”

The central sitting area is down the hall from Aunt’s room (404). It’s where residents sit and watch TV or sleep in chairs or wheelchairs. The dining area is next to that living room-like area, so many residents congregate there to wait before mealtime.  

The aide unlocked Aunt’s door, went for her, and wheeled her down the hallway to her room, where I waited. 

Aunt, weighing less than a hundred pounds and wearing a dark-colored sweater, seemed a little groggy. I wasn’t sure she recognized me as she didn’t say my name or return a greeting. I took my guitar from its case and sang hymns. She warmed to the music and said, “That’s good, Steve.” She mouthed the words to a song or two.

Suddenly, we heard a loud on-going sound — “Gw-ack, gw-ack, gw-ack … !”

The sound was no siren or bell, but a loud electronic “gw-ack.” I walked to the door of  Aunt’s room. A light flashed from the hallway ceiling, and the sound continued, loud enough that I wanted to put my hands over my ears. An attendant down the hall said, “It’s a fire drill. We’ll have to take her outside.”

I cased my guitar and left it as I wheeled Aunt to the hallway. A young attendant, dressed in white, headed toward us. “I’ve got her,” I said. He nodded. 

I wheeled Aunt past the gathering area and dining tables to a windowed side of the building, through a door to an outside patio. The morning was chilly but sunny. I looked about, noticing that most residents were small and in wheelchairs. There were no more than 25 residents, plus some attendants. 

Ms. Peterson sat near us. Her husband once owned Peterson Lumber Company in Travelers Rest. Ms. Peterson eats at Aunt’s table at almost every meal. Residents congregate in usual places, like people do in church pews in a sanctuary. Ms. Peterson said to me, “How are you?” 

“Doing fine,” I said, thinking that Ms. Peterson’s mind was probably in better shape than Aunt Frances’ because she right-away recognized me. 

“There’s your friend,” I said to Aunt. She looked and smiled at her friend but said nothing. An attendant said we should stay outside till the fire department came and looked around the building. Soon, I heard a siren in the distance. 

In a while, we moved back inside, and I returned Aunt to her room. I sang and talked. As I played one song, Aunt said, “My husband plays a guitar.” 

I realized that, during a short time, perhaps seconds, she thought Uncle Fred was alive. And I wondered if she didn’t realize that I, Steve, was there, in her room, playing my guitar for her. 

I soon prayed with her and let her attendant know she could return to the gathering place. One attendant told me that sometimes Aunt will be in the hallway and ask her, “Where’s Fred.”

Driving away, I wondered whether it would be better that my body wore out before my mind or my mind wore out before my body. It appears the latter has happened to Aunt Frances. 

GIVING THANKS ALONG THE WAY

 “I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving and will call upon the name of the LORD”  (Psalm 116:17).

“In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

Here are the words to a much-loved chorus, Give Thanks, by Don Moen:

  “Give thanks with a grateful heart.
  “Give thanks to the Holy One.
  “Give thanks because He’s given Jesus Christ, His Son.
  “And now let the weak say, ‘I am strong.’
  “Let the poor say, ‘I am rich,’
  “Because of what the Lord has done for us.
  “Give thanks.”

“Being grateful” is defined as being “warmly or deeply appreciative of kindness or benefits received; thankful.”

The Rev. Dan Carr, a pastor I met while living 28 years in N.C., recently wrote about Jewish people traveling to the Temple in Jerusalem during Old Testament times. The following material is borrowed from the writings of Dan Carr:

“Families, especially the men, made the trip three times a year from all parts of the nation,” Carr says. “They prepared food for the trip and slept on the ground along the way. From the north, some traveled over 200 miles one-way, and many from all over traveled over 100 miles one-way.”

Some of the Psalms are called “ascension” Psalms because they were sung by pilgrims as they climbed upward on their way to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. 

“The giving of thanks to Jehovah was a vital part of their journeying worship as well as when they reached the Temple,” he says. “They brought offerings to the Temple and one of the offerings was ‘thanksgiving’ … The Psalms gave structure to their thanksgiving. Some of our hymns today do the same thing as the Jewish Psalms.”

Carr says the fall trip occurred around October and three feasts were observed: The Feast of Trumpets, The Day of Atonement, and The Feast of Tabernacles. 

There were seven memorial days Jews practiced after settling in the Promised Land. The Feast of Passover began on the night they left Egypt. The Feast of Tabernacles reminded them of how their forefathers lived in tents and hovels made of branches.  

Kevin Howard and Marvin Rosenthal, authors of The Feasts of the Lord, say, “The three fall feasts portray events to be associated with Christ’s second coming. The Feast of Trumpets depicts the Rapture of the Church. The Day of Atonement points to a great host of people, Jews and Gentiles, who will be saved when the Messiah Himself will tabernacle among men, wipe away every tear, and bring in the utopian age or ‘golden age’ of which men have dreamed since time immemorial.”

Carr says that when Jesus visited with the woman at the well, he told her that God is a Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth and that God seeks such to worship Him. 

“Getting saved involves much more than eternity in Heaven,” Carr says. “It’s the entry gate into a continual fellowship or communion with God.  Thanksgiving is always a great part of communion with God because He is our creator, redeemer, and provider, and we acknowledge those things.”

The Bible is full of references to humble people giving thanks to God, Carr says. “Those who truly know God understand that in Him we live, and move, and have our being (Acts 17:28) and have no trouble understanding the essential practice of thanksgiving and worship of the living God.

When we stray away from our daily fellowship with God, our hearts are cold and calloused, and we know it; no one has to tell us, Carr says, adding, “Praying comes hard. There’s nothing that will warm a cold heart like beginning to thank God for His blessings. Thank Him for everything you can think of because He made it all. After we remind ourselves of all the things He has already done for us, it’s not so hard to pray for other things we may need.” 

YOUNG PEOPLE NEED THE BIBLE TO BUILD CHARACTER

 “In the last several years, Americans have been sensing that something is seriously wrong with the current crop of young people,” Annie Holmquist, editor of Intellectual Takeout, wrote in 2017.

Young people are likely to have the most education credentials any generation has ever received, are technically-savvy, and have a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips, Holmquist said.

“But in spite of these factors, today’s students seem to exhibit a character that is high in sensitivity and low in knowledge,” she said. “Why are our students turning out like this?”

Camille Paglia, a Democrat, feminist, and college professor, believes the problem started in the earliest stages of education in America’s public schools.
  “I’ve been teaching now for 46 years as a classroom teacher, and I have felt the slow devolution of the quality of public school education in the classroom,” she says.

Paglia notes that teachers at elite institutions are unable to see this decline in knowledge because their students often come from private schools and wealthy homes, which presumably still retain some elements of rigorous education. The great majority of students, however, can be described in the following way.

“What has happened is these young people now getting to college have no sense of history – of any kind! … No world geography. No sense of the violence and the barbarities of history. So, they think that the whole world has always been like this, a kind of nice, comfortable world where you can go to the store and get orange juice and milk, and you can turn on the water and the hot water comes out. They have no sense whatever of the destruction, of the great civilizations that rose and fell, and so on – and how arrogant people get when they’re in a comfortable civilization. They now have been taught to look around them to see defects in America – which is the freest country in the history of the world – and to feel that somehow America is the source of all evil in the universe, and it’s because they’ve never been exposed to the actual evil of the history of humanity. They know nothing!”  

Paglia continues, “There’s one exception to this, however. Even while today’s students have not been taught knowledge, they have also been taught not to bully a person on the basis of their race, class, gender, or any other trait. On the surface, that seems like a good thing.”

But Paglia implies that such a lesson (against bullying) gives students a high level of sensitivity and a stilted view of the world and its problems. She fears students are pushing their country toward a situation similar to that of ancient Rome in its last days.

John Adams (1735-1826) said that the failure to teach truth, combined with the dumbing down of education and the embrace of Epicurean pleasures and teachings is one of the things most likely to bring “punishment” to America.

“The Bible is the history book of the universe,” says “Answers in Genesis.” If we teach young people about the accounts, wisdom, and salvation recorded in the Bible, they will learn about life. 

Youth Leader Chris Cherry says, “We don’t teach the Bible for head knowledge — it’s not a textbook. … We teach the Bible because it is one of the core pieces that awakens youth (and all folks, for that matter) to the presence of God in the world.”

Mark Yaconelli says, “Our first task as youth ministers is to be with young people just as Jesus was with people. … We are also called, like Jesus, to be teachers.”

The quality of public school education has declined, as far as teaching Bible truths. Patrick Henry said, “The Bible is worth all the other books which have ever been printed.” Parents, pastors, and youth leaders, please teach the Bible to young people!