On the Other Side of the Wall: Silver Linings

   We all have our struggles. For most of us it is a very real struggle to get up out of our cozy beds early in the morning to start a day that will be full of ordinary stress. We get the kids dressed and off to school, rush to work, deal with coffee spills, snowy weather, wait in the never ending line in the grocery store with a screaming toddler. Life is full of annoyances; fender-bender types of situations that mess up our days, leave us irritated, and make us want to kick the dog, slam the door, and eat three enormous pieces of rich chocolate cake with dark chocolate icing as soon as possible. But we do our best, right? We get out of bed, try to be nice, try to have a good day, And the sun comes out, the traffic is moving along faster, we get our favorite parking spot, the kids actually make their beds without being reminded ten times, the baby takes a long nap, there is a beautiful card in the mailbox from a dear friend. But how do we re-act to a real bump in the road? A life-changing sort of problem that comes up and slams into our lives head on?

   One way of coping with a life altering problem or even the day to day "normal" problems is to look for the silver linings. That's where we find hope and and the good in life's trials. You have a new perspective on what is really important and begin to see how things are actually working out. After hanging in there your faith deepens, your relationships are more meaningful than ever before, in general you have a new perspective on life. However, that fresh view of life's challenges sometimes requires some distance, some time and then we can see how the jagged pieces fit together and the picture comes into focus. The blur from unanswered questions becomes clearer than when it was up close consuming our thoughts. 

   When I look back at that valley of Alzheimer's Disease, frankly, I don't see a beautiful landscape. For the most part I still have questions that won't be answered this side of heaven. However, I do see a few rivers that cut through the valley and keep flowing, carrying meaning into the plains of my life beyond that experience. For me one of those rivers, or silver linings, that I can now see after the space of time is my grandpa. When we started seeing him every week I had the opportunity to get to know my grandfather as more of a person and not just the somewhat feared head of our extended family.
   In many ways Grandpa and I had similar personalities which created a bond between us. Both of us tended to keep our true feelings to ourselves. I knew Grandpa loved me by the way his face lit up when I walked into his house and his enthusiastic almost surprised way of saying "Hi-ya Sarah!". He knew I loved him when he teased me and I teased him back. I wanted to be with him. At the messy dining room table we talked about the history of long-lost family members he had hunted for and discovered on his treks to libraries and cemeteries along the East coast. Next to his cherry wood desk he had a tall green file cabinet that held bulging folders of information on both sides of his and grandma's family tree. One day he pulled out a file and told me about a Hessian soldier named Chester Mack who married into the clan during the Revolutionary War. He even had a certificate with Chester's name on it. Once, when I was cleaning, I found an antique red family photo album held together by masking tape on the binding. Grandpa pointed out his parents to me who posed with serious expressions on their faces despite their youth. For the first time in my life I became acquainted with my great grandparents through the album grandpa had never talked about before. I asked him if I could borrow some of the pictures to make some copies but he wouldn't allow me to. However, at our next visit he gave me copies to keep that he had made at the library.
   I treasure the time I got to spend with my grandfather after we became more involved in Grandma's care. She needed help but Grandpa needed us just as much. He had lost his beautiful wife of almost sixty years to a disease that had left him with only a very small fraction of the woman he loved. He was there every day missing her. Who knows?  Maybe I was as much of a silver-lining to him as he was to me.