Relationship

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Moving Mum

Want to know what it’s like to check your Mum into full care? I don’t know either, but one thing’s for sure: I am about to find out…

I am on a flight from Brisbane to Melbourne. This will be followed by a two and half hour drive to Victoria’s western district. Tonight I will stay at my parents’ home. It will be the last night Mum and Dad will spend together in their family home. I don’t think the momentous nature of this change has settled on us just yet.


Mum, March 2010

So, it all started about three months ago. I was visiting Mum and Dad on one of my ‘flying visits’: quick mid week jaunts where I would stay over with them for two nights and then return home. Mum, Dad and I were to go next door to have tea with my sister Jo and her husband Fred. Jo was picking up some tea on the way home from work. So here we are, waiting in my parent’s lounge room, and Mum simply said “Do you think Jo will have enough food for all these people?” The phrase “all these people” took me by surprise: there were only the three of us in the room, and with Jo and Fred, that still only came to five.

“What do you mean, ‘all these people, Mum?’ There are only three of us, and then Jo and Fred” I said.

Mum gave me a bit of an odd look. Like she knew I was right, but also that there was some other reality invading hers…

I don’t think the momentous nature of this change has settled on us just yet.

Chatting with Jo later that night I learned that these ‘visions’ had been happening from time to time.

Then, two weeks later, I called Mum to see how she and Dad were going. Mum asked me whether I had heard what had happened earlier that morning. I hadn’t. So she told me: mum explained how that morning she had fainted, and she thought she had died, and that some people revived her, but now everything was OK. Or so her story went.

Since that time there have been a good number of other stories, all with a similar cast of other people. For some reason, they all seem to be dressed in black. We have come to call these people ‘the men in black’. These apparently benign and everpresent figures are very real to Mum. The problem is they are not real to anyone else who might be present at the time…

At this point, we have learned not to challenge the existence of the Men in Black, or anything else that Mum may “see”. Instead, we have decided to explore Mum’s experiences with her. We ask her what the Men in Black are doing, or what they are saying. I think this has helped ‘normalise’ Mum’s experiences for her, and I’m sure that if we challenged her every time she mentioned them, she would only become distressed. So our goal has been to keep things as normal as we can for Mum. It seems, at this point, to have been a successful strategy.

In the last three months Mum’s delusional ‘realities’ have made their presence felt in our lives. While we are still waiting for an official diagnosis, it seems that Mum is being drawn into the world of some sort of Alzheimer’s or dementia. In way, the diagnosis is kind of academic. Whatever it turns out to be, the ACAT clinician says Mum should go into full care, and hence this plane trip. And this blog post. And the ones that will follow.

In the next few posts I want to explore this time of transition for our family, in the hope that it may be helpful for others in the same position. And, of course, I’ll keep you up to date with how it all goes.

Q: Have you ever had to check a parent or loved one into full care? How did it go? Feel free to share your experiences by posting a comment.

Grace and peace: Dave

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How to tell people about Jesus … and be taken seriously (1)

Jesus says he has come to give life, and give life to the full. If Christians really do believe this (and they should!) you have to wonder why they are not better at passing on this tremendous news.

This hesitation seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon, at least when viewed alongside church history since the time of Jesus and the early church. Rodney Stark in The Rise of Christianity has shown that early Christians were responsible for the incredibly rapid and effective spread the message of Jesus. Cultures then were very different form cultures now, but the Gospel broke new cultural and social ground on a regular basis.

If it’s true that we live in a more open and tolerant society, why do Christians today struggle to share the good news?

Maybe we’ve become too reliant on programs and packaged approaches. If we need to know the program, the outline, or the diagram, but we don’t know it very well, no one will jump when the opportunity arises. We’ve seen evangelism experts hold huge rallies, and the televangelists on the screen. We compare ourselves to these people, and we always pull up short.

Have you considered that grassroots Christianity is a much more powerful vehicle for sharing the good news about Jesus? Not only that: it is more likely to meet with a positive reception.

Here’s why: the message of Jesus needs to be observed in the context of friendship, relationship, and the realities of life. When this happens, people see what it means to follow Jesus in the context of their families. They see people doing what they can to live a Jesus honouring life at work. People showing the relevance of Jesus in the context of education or academic pursuit. People talking about the difference Jesus makes as they chat over the back fence to their neighbour.

In these environments there is so little pretence. There’s very little capacity for ‘saying one thing’ and ‘doing another. Here it is all about authenticity. It’s the sort of glass house that allows people to see what life with Jesus is really like.

This will take Jesus and his transforming grace into homes, families, workplaces, schools and any number of other social contexts. As such, it represents a tremendous opportunity to reinvigorate western Christianity. Risky, I know, but what an incredible opportunity to revitalise how a watching world sees a loving God!

In the posts to come, I want to look a little more about how we can do this better.

Q: Have you ever thought of asking your neighbours over for a meal with the intention of being open about your faith in Jesus? What would needs to change for you to do this?

Grace and peace: Dave

Location:Delancey St,Ormiston,Australia

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We all want relationship

The Dog ‘n’ Bull hotel has been in Bonalbo for ages. Sometime in the last 15 years or so the pub has had a bit of a refurbishment. I’ve never seen the old pub, but my guess is that while the renovations have given more room inside and some added functionality, this has come at the expense of old world charm.

There were a few chairs and tables outside, occupied by a number of the locals. We offered a ‘G’day’ with the characteristic wink, which was acknowledged with a nod and a wary smile. One man, whom we later learned was Old Errol [not his real name], had a Staffy [is his real breed] which appeared to be Old Errol’s equal in years. The Staffy had less hair than Old Errol, bald over most of its lower back and down its tail. An ugly dog. Uglier than most Staffies, in fact. Even so, he and Errol appeared to be great mates, and I felt good about that.

Behind the bar was a tall man wearing a handlebar moustache, a shirt with a Rabbito’s emblem, and the best ‘mullet’ I had seen in years. Sporting photographs, other memorabilia, framed football jerseys and historic team photos held pride of place around the bar. It was pretty obvious: Bonalbo locals loved their Rugby League. We thought it prudent not to let on that we were from Queensland: the day we visited was the week before the final State of Origin challenge, and Queensland had already won two of the three game series. Few things bring out the rivalry between Queensland and New South Wales better than the State of Origin series. It’s all good fun, and for a moment I imagined what it would be like to be at the Dog ‘n’ Bull the evening the game would be played, with Old Errol, his Staffy, and everyone else piling it on the visiting Queenslanders.

One of the mounted football jerseys was from Saint Clair Junior Rugby League Club, and dedicated to “Hornie”. We were not sure who Hornie was, but we guessed he was the proprietor of the Dog ‘n’ Bull. It also occurred to me that Hornie might have been the man behind the bar. He appeared to have any amount of time to talk to people like Old Errol and others who came to the bar. I wondered why people would come and sit in a pub for hours on end. Did Old Errol and others have nothing better to do? Did they have families? Jobs? I thought it was easy to make judgements about how much money someone might spend at the bar, and what better things they could do with it. But Bonalbo is a small place, and some people are just lonely. In those contexts, places like the Dog ‘n’ Bull provide a context for mateship and community. You can have a beer, tell Hornie your thoughts on pretty well anything, and he’ll listen, like a non-judgemental father-confessor. Others at the bar listen too, and offer the occasional banter in reply. This is why people come to the Dog ‘n’ Bull. People want to be with people. They want relationship and friendship. None of us were made to be alone. The Dog ‘n’ Bull might be one of the most consistent expressions of community some people will find. And I think this is why people enjoy places like the Dog ‘n’ Bull so much.

We rattled another 40 odd kilometres down the track to Paddys Flat, where the road crosses the Clarence River. Here we found the WWII tank traps (see pic, with Erin giving the size perspective), supposedly set up along ‘The Brisbane Line’. These were sizable pyramids of concrete. I tried to imagine how they would fare against a tank advance, and I think I could clearly imagine a tank blasting the concrete barriers out of the way. What was unclear was why the Japanese would want to advance along Paddys Flat Road in the first place! I can’t say for sure, but I think there would be areas of greater military significance.

So we had set out to see the tank traps, and in the end they were not the big deal of the day. I found myself thinking about Old Errol and his ugly Staffy, and wondering what it’s like for him when the weather is cold, the night is dark, and the Dog ‘n’ Bull is closed.

(Pic: Crossing the Clarence River at Paddys Flat, near the tanks traps on the ‘Brisbane Line’)