This Lent has been a painful one for me. On April 15, I will be 95. I am going blind, and I can no longer drive. Up until a year ago, I was a daily communicant at the 8 a.m. Mass. I drove myself and I used a cane. Today, someone must drive me to church, and I use a walker instead of a cane. I attend the 10:30 a.m. Sunday Mass and occasionally make a weekday Mass at noon.
Losing your right and ability to drive is difficult. It is one of the things most feared by the elderly. It cannot be fully understood until it happens, and I am fearful of how it affects my Lenten routine. Lent for me has been a penitential time of fasting, penance, additional spiritual activities and prayers—an attempt to get closer to God.
I was feeling discouraged when I met recently with my spiritual director, Joy. Would I be able to get to those spiritual and penitential services in church, often held at night? Joy gave me an article by the spiritual writer Cameron Bellm about approaching Lent “for people who are already suffering” or hurting.
Bellm writes, “the Lenten practice you need the most might be...treating yourself with kindness.”
“It doesn’t have to be expensive. It doesn’t have to be every day…it can be sweet and simple, however it fits into your life,” she writes. “We should think of Lent not as an obligation, but as an invitation to intimacy, to growth, to communion with God.” The point is “to love yourself as a sacred echo of the way you are loved by God.” She concludes, “we know that we are dependent on God for everything.”
I thought this was an inspirational way to look at Lent. So this year it is a “soft” 40 days with some kindness thrown in. Trying to remind myself of this approach may help me have a fruitful Lent, but I am hoping it will also help me in the days that follow, as I face the ongoing challenge of learning to cope with a new lifestyle and adjusting to blindness.
Macular degeneration is my most serious medical problem. Other problems include a bad back from spinal stenosis, acute hearing loss, and a body filled with arthritis. I now have to get out of bed to use the bathroom four to five times a night. Yet each morning I thank God for another new day.
“We should think of Lent not as an obligation, but as an invitation to intimacy, to growth, to communion with God.”
My 88-year-old wife, Lila, also has a number of ills, with atrial fibrillation being the most serious. It is a second marriage for both of us. We were single parents for nearly 10 years, until we married in 1997. Lila is my rock and my comforter. Handling trauma and radical changes in lifestyles are not new for Lila. When Lila was 44, her husband, Bart, died suddenly after jogging. She struggled to raise Karen, then 14, Doug, 16, and Susan, 18. She sent all of them to college.
My story is similar. My wife, Kathy, died at 51 and left me to raise two girls, 14 and 17 years. It wasn’t easy. My older daughter Kathleen, a summa cum laude graduate from college and a lawyer, spent much of her life battling the demons of addiction. She went to the best rehabs, but it drained me financially. In May of 2018, Kathleen was 48 when she overdosed on fentanyl. In addition to my sorrow, I felt relief knowing she was now in the hands of a merciful and loving God.
“It can be sweet and simple, however it fits into your life.”
Until recently, I spent hours reading or spending time on the computer. I subscribed to four newspapers and magazines, including 50 years to America. My most important daily task is reading the Liturgy of the Hours. The magnification program in the computer is my lifeline for communication and writing. I can write, but with great difficulty because of my carpal tunnel syndrome and my failing vision. On average three out of every six words written are misspelled and must be corrected.
I served two years in the Navy in the 1950s, and the Veterans Administration has provided help with high-tech and expensive devices, like the one that magnifies the page for me. Soon I will likely begin using a device that scans pages and reads them aloud to me. But all the devices will do little to relieve my wife Lila of the new burdens and chores she must handle as my vision worsens. Each day I become more dependent on her.
“We know that we are dependent on God for everything.”
Lila is not Catholic. She has not been blessed with the gift of faith, but she has been blessed with an abundance of love. And as the prophet Jeremiah writes, “the Lord alone probes the mind and tests the heart” and then rewards according to their deeds.
Even as our lives change, we hope one ritual won’t change. At bedtime, lying side-by-side in our king-sized bed, we pray together the classic and simple prayer of St. Francis:
“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred to let me sow love…
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light….”
I pray that a “soft” approach to this season of Lent may help us to see God at work in our lives now, and in all our days to come.
