Courage....

We tend to associate it with the spectacular and newsworthy – rescuing children from burning buildings, struggling to survive earthquakes, floods and all sorts of other natural disasters, fighting for freedom. It all takes courage. But so does much of what needs to be faced about the ordinary business of living a life. And at age 91, my mother-in-law is a good example. It takes courage to accept the difficult limitations that come with old age. It takes courage to face up to the fact that she simply can’t look after herself the way she has done all her life. It takes courage to leave the home where she’s lived for the past 46 years and move into a much smaller space in an assisted living facility. And it takes a lot of courage to come to that decision by herself, thus sparing us the heart-wrenching task of having to do it for her – the way so many adult children of aging parents must do.

Nora made the decision on her own a little over a month ago, and then she told us she wanted to move as quickly as arrangements could be made. Fortunately there was an apartment available in an assisted living complex nearby and so for the last couple of weeks we have been helping her move in. It’s a lovely place with lots of amenities, staffed by genuinely caring professionals. Her new apartment - consisting of a kitchenette/living room, a bedroom and a large bathroom - is roomy enough for many of her favorite pieces of furniture. And we were able to have the pretty living room drapes she was so fond of altered to fit beautifully on her living room windows.


We brought over as many of her treasured possessions as we could, spending a fair amount of time hanging pictures, arranging photographs, and finding places to display the little knick-knacks she’s accumulated over the years. We even managed to deck out her bathroom the way she wanted it – with lots and lots of purple accents!


But as charming and cozy as her new apartment is, I know it’s not going to be easy for her to settle into living there. As much as we would like to think that she is happy and content living in her new place, I wonder if it is really fair of us to expect her to be. We have no experience with the kind of leave-taking that she has had to go through these past few weeks as she prepared to walk away from the home she and her husband built and raised their family in. Each and everything she left behind was attached to a memory. Leaving it all behind must surely have been an ordeal.

Nor do we have a clue about how stressful it is trying to adjust to an entirely new lifestyle at the age of 91, or the inconvenience of no longer being able to live according to her own schedule as she has for such a long time, or the annoyances that go along with being surrounded by other people she doesn’t know all that well (and may not even care to.) And above all, we know absolutely nothing about what it’s like to recognize deep in our heart that we can no longer be the independent, energetic, capable and confident person we’ve been all our lives, adept at doing all the hundreds of little things we have gotten used to doing for ourselves ever since we became adults.

I think it takes a great deal of courage to bear the difficult burden that comes with extreme old age. It’s the kind of courage that Nora has demonstrated ever since she made the decision to move out of her home and into assisted living. Despite how comfortable and attractive her new apartment may be, it will never replace what home has meant to her. Hers is the kind of courage I may someday need to have myself. And if and when that time comes, I hope I will be able to remember the example she has set for me.