Home

Two weeks ago, we rode that great roller-coaster ride of emotions, and settled my darling old Mum and her identical twin into a Care Home.  They are ninety three, and disability, dementia, and yet another fall finally tipped the scales, bringing us to that decision which we always swore we would never make.  The loving care which they need and deserve, we have now delegated to others, which releases us to visit them more often with a new found freedom from anxiety.
In the Home, everything is clean, new, and of the best quality; the staff are cheerful, compassionate, and understanding.  They bring us a tray of tea and chocolate biscuits to the sitting room where we find the twins, identically dressed, sitting arm in arm on the sofa.  There is a clarinet recital going on.  An elderly musician with greying ginger hair, his toupe’ slightly askew, is winding down to the end of his repertoire.  We all clap.  The twins loved it and looked happy and relaxed for the first time in ages.
My two brothers and I decided we would take them for a wheel chair ride around the park, which means going down in the small lift, two at a time.  My Mother suffers from claustrophobia, so I said ‘Close your eyes, Mum, say the Lord’s Prayer slowly, and we’ll be out in no time at all.’  I pressed the large round button.  The lift dropped about two feet and jolted to a halt just below floor level.  I pressed it again – another jolt!  I felt suddenly hot and slightly panicky.  Mum was going through the Lord’s prayer for the third time, with her hands over her eyes.  I pressed and held the button and we bumped to the ground floor, but the doors didn’t open!  Mum’s voice rose to a hysterical crescendo, ‘Thine be the kingdom, the power, and the glory…’  There was only one button in the lift and it wasn’t doing anything!  I peered through the small glass panel to see an empty corridor.  I banged on the metal door – Mum’s claustrophobia invading my being, my hands shaking and clammy.  ‘Can somebody help?’ I shouted.  ‘It’s alright Mum, say it again!’, I said breathlessly.  Then I heard my brother’s voice –‘It’s OK, Jane, I’m getting the Janitor!’         The Janitor apologised profusely and said that he, too, was a claustrophobic twin, and didn’t like that lift either!
With great relief, we stepped outside, across a neatly paved forecourt, through wrought iron gates, and into the quiet peace of the park.  The lawns, newly mown, stretched away like velvet, dappled by sunlight filtered through the leafy canopy above.  The twins thought they were back in the Rectory garden of their childhood home in Yorkshire.  Three Labradors ran up to lick the thin, blue veined hands, outstretched to greet them, then bounded away down the path.  ‘Can we go home now?’ they asked.
We settled them back into their own room.  My daughter, Lizzie and her baby arrived to visit.  ‘Who’s she?’ they asked.  ‘Hello Granny, it’s me, Lizzie.  It’ll soon be your birthday, won’t it?’ ‘Oh, No!  Will it?’ they replied, aghast. ‘ How old are we?’ ‘You’re going to be 94, Granny!’ ‘What?! Ninety Four?’.  They turned to look at each other as though looking in a mirror. ‘Heavens!’ they gasped. ‘ We might as well be dead! But what we want to know is…WHEN can we go HOME!
My heart aches as I write this, and it goes out to those who are struggling about making this same decision about a much loved relative.  I draw comfort from Mum’s unshakable Christian faith, and from the scripture I read this morning from 2 Corinthians, chapter 5:1 – 10.
‘For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down – when we die and leave these bodies – we will have a home in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands.  We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long for the day when we will put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. For we will not be spirits without bodies, but we will put on new heavenly bodies.  Our dying bodies make us groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and have no bodies at all.  We want to slip into our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by everlasting life. God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee, he has given us his Holy Spirit.  So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies, we are not at home with the Lord.  That is why we live by believing and not by seeing.  Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord….. ‘  (Life Application Study Bible)