By Jenna Smith
It is a natural human reaction to dodge suffering. We all procrastinate homework, swerve around potholes, and take painkillers to keep from feeling pain and discomfort. This was my experience when I was 15 and my parents told me that my grandparents were going to move into our home and share life with us. For me, someone who struggled with the idea of proximity to aging and disease, their arrival meant a front row seat to the scariest thing ever: approaching death. But in years since, my perspective has changed, and I see that this front row seat is a double edged blessing for me and my family. While witnessing suffering is challenging, being there to love someone in their own weakness helped me see the sanctity in human life, and it blessed me in ways I never imagined.
One thing I learned while having my grandparents living with me was appreciation and respect. So often we take for granted that we are only alive and blessed with the life we have because previous generations carried and cared for us. Before my nonna was born, her body was carrying the eggs that would be fertilized and become my mom, who bore me. Before I needed food and clothing, my grandpa took a job at a refrigerator factory and built it into a lifelong career in finance that allowed my mom to eat, receive an education, start her teaching job, and meet my dad. These are the things I reminded myself when Grandpa was wandering around lost because dementia was clouding his mind. This couple, my grandparents, helped to build my world in a very personal way, and living close to them amplified my respect and appreciation for that.
Another lesson for me was that it’s okay to love someone awkwardly. Like I stated earlier, proximity to pain scared me. And sometimes I would come face to face with a situation concerning my nonna or grandpa that I didn’t know how to handle because dementia and the loneliness of aging were so foreign to me. But I was eventually able to see that done with a caring heart, an extra load of dishes, giving a hug, listening without interrupting, or just smiling are all appropriate ways to care for humans who are hurting, and these methods are miles ahead of doing nothing at all.
The last thing I experienced wasn’t really a lesson. You can’t learn it really, because there’s nothing to memorize or understand. The last thing is that it hurts. It hurts to see the people who made your childhood magical feel grief from dying friends and siblings. It hurts to know that your own thoughtless actions caused them to think they were a burden or too troublesome to bother with. It hurts to watch someone you used to know change into a stranger, one demented day at a time. In times like this, suffering isn’t something you can dodge or scribble over because it is printed on your heart and in your DNA. Yet, suffering teaches us good things too. In suffering, you also discover that the God who created the precious human life before you longs to cherish that life eternally. Just as no earthly disability takes away a human’s dignity, so too no hellish trial can take away God’s kindness. When my grandparents or I sat in pain or discomfort, Jesus was sitting with us and promising to care for me and my family, to forgive me from my sins. He saw our needs and met them in His own way.
I am indebted to my grandparents for their patience and faith when they moved three states away from their home and joined me in mine. That section from my life gave me insight into the way that their own lives, the easy parts and the hard, built mine. They helped me see that my own worth isn’t in what I do, but in the person God created me to be. Holy, spotless, and without blemish before Him. There is no greater blessing than that.