'It’s a terrible thing, old age.'

Wise words from my mother as we got to the end of the TV biography of Bette Davis. Sure enough, she was once extremely beautiful and didn’t look too good in the last months of her life.  I suspect few people do.  But, as hard as it is to face our own physical demise, I suspect it’s harder for the people who have to watch, those who are younger and therefore in complete denial about their own mortality.  That’s how I feel, watching the decline of screen icon Bette Davis.  That’s where I am most of the time-firmly planted in denial.

But sometimes it’s impossible to escape reality, as it has been for me this week.  On Tuesday I attended my aunts funeral.  She was my favourite aunt because she was the most warm and welcoming member of my family when I was a kid.  She was fun to be around.  Her funeral was held on a wet and windy afternoon, in a crematorium looking out onto fields of daffodils-a beautiful setting that I think she would‘ve approved of.  Then on Friday I wandered around the small mining town of Crook, looking for my grandfathers grave stone.  I didn’t find his, but I found many others and appreciated again how many young men of the small town had given their lives in WWII.  This afternoon I visited my grandmother in her retirement home.  Hers is the funeral I was expecting to attend this week, since she’s 94 and her health has declined rapidly in the past month.  She was asleep when my mother and I visited, but we were distracted by the incoherent babbling of the old folks around her.  It was hard to stay there very long.  Growing old looks embarrassing.
 
So now I’m searching the scriptures for reassurance of my home in heaven, looking for new energy for the fight of faith.  My circumstances have reminded me that physical death is unavoidable and that it’s not necessarily quick or in any way dignified.  But they’ve also reminded me that this most terrifying of fears was faced and overcome by Christ. 

Read on HERE.

Philomena

allthesephilomena@yahoo.com