Job 2:10

Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?

I wanted him to live forever, but that was not to be. The journey of my father’s decline began innocently enough with trips to the emergency room. My father’s congestive heart failure hooked its talons into us more and more frequently. And pneumonia, the death harbinger of the elderly, haunted us more often. As his organs aged and weakened in their purpose, the minor surgeries and major treatments increased.

The aroma of alcohol and disinfectants hit me when we entered the hospital waiting room. I inhaled the cleaning liquids that hospital staff use to scrub away the germs and evidence of illness and disease. After the check-in and examination, the doctor announced that my father needed to be admitted again, and the familiar routine of exchanging street clothes for the ubiquitous paisley hospital gown and slippers began. I left the room to give him some privacy while he changed, and then I returned to help with the bagging of valuables to be taken home with me. As I looked at him, newly frocked in his gown and covered with the starched sheets, I wondered incredulously to myself, “Who in the world actually designs the patterns on these gowns?” I welcomed the random thoughts that distracted me, and I commenced to look for other signs of trivial interest.

“What to do you think of your designer gown, Dad?”

“Lovely,” he answered with fake gentility.

He had grayed late in life, and coupled with his mental sharpness and good looks, he seemed ageless to me. In the last five years though he could not escape the inevitable aging, and his hair had finally turned white.

Always a gentleman, my father endeared himself early to hospital personnel.

“I’m sorry it’s taking so long to get you to your room, Mr. Rudin,” a male nurse said sincerely.

My father who was ready with a witty remark in all but the most dire situations answered, “That’s why they call us ‘patients’.” The nurse smiled with a look that betrayed his relief at having a congenial charge.

The nurse handed me a plastic wrapped package of slippers that were again hallmarks of hospital fashion—grey yarn knitted into a facsimile of a foot and bearing cracked rubber stripes across the bottom that were supposed to prevent sliding on the tile floors.

When I slipped the hospital slippers over my father’s blue veined and knotted feet, I was overcome by love for this man who has been such a wonderful father. I felt incredibly tender and blessed by the opportunity. Those feet carried this person for over ninety years. They had toddled down the wooden staircase of his childhood home; they nervously stood at the altar for his marriage; they walked the deck of the Jacob Jones during WWII; and they survived my childish glee as I “danced” with him, too short to reach his arms so I stood on his feet. Those feet led me down the aisle at my wedding, and they led him down the aisle for the funerals of his parents, his brother and sister, and his beloved wife.

The images were spiraling through my mind. I’m sure that my father had no idea that my simple task invoked so much love and so many memories. But I didn’t say anything; I just put on his slippers.

“There, Dad. You’re all ready.”

I ask You to give him peace and courage as he struggles against limitations brought on by age. May I see all the opportunities You give me for showing my love. Help me to be there when my father needs me.