Not having recovered from the DHNS youth convention in
Staying over night at her son’s house, we stayed up late talking with the family. We talked about the feisty mother who has been so strong to hold on to life with her very frail health; we talked about the loving father who has been so hurt seeing his loved one dying; we talked about the hardship that every single member of the family endures taking care of their wife/mother/mother-in-law/grandmother. Those are what we talked about; but what I saw was the tremendous love everyone was pouring out for one another. The daughter-in-law amazed me with her gentleness and utmost care when I caught her several time wiping the mother’s face and combing her hair. The loving husband made my heart sink when I caught him sitting quietly next to her for hours. He just looked at her and she looked at him. Not one word. Only enduring love. They have been together and the have been through so many ups and downs of their lives. The oldest daughter was patiently taking to her mom though she knew it was only a one-way communication: whatever the mom said, everyone understood, but she did not comprehend whatever was going on and being said. The grown son made a comment while spoonfeeding his mother, “Human life moves through cycle: you start out as a baby and you come back to the baby stage at the end of your life. My mom is acting like a baby now.” He stopped to hold the juice bottle for her to drink. “The problem is,” he continued, “with babies everyone wants to take care of, but with old people, they are easy to be forgotten and abandoned.” We all nodded, not knowing what to think of it. I didn’t know what he meant; I only saw the love and care that he was pouring out for his mom in these last days. He’s a business man, father of two, carrying some sickness himself. Over the 20 hours I stayed at their house, if he was not busy feeding her, he was fixing her bed, bathing her, cleaning the house in between business phone calls that he still had to make. The two school-age boys hugged their grandmother when they got home from school then went off to do homework, then play. I guess they couldn’t understand much what it really means to have a family member’s life slowly passed away in front of them. But that doesn’t matter much because what they are also witnessing is greater than any force in life. They are witnessing the love everyone is giving each other. This love their whole family is giving to their grandmother is not based on the beautiful appearances, because their dying grandmother is obviously not beautiful; not on physical strength because she is at her most frail stage of health; not on excitement, because there are only slow and silent moments in the house; not on productivity because their grandmother is doing nothing but being fed, and their whole family spends all their time taking care of her.
Yes, they are experiencing the counter-cultured love. They are experiencing the true Christian love through family love. The seed of love is being implanted in them when the see what their parents, their aunt and their grandfather are doing.
