Reading To Mom From “The Blue Book”

 by Kevin Burton

   We called it the Blue Book, and it was/is a gift from God, via Grand Rapids.

   There was a season, still very fresh in memory, when my mother, having slowly lost most of her abilities, was bedridden, periodically quite discouraged, badly in need of comfort.

   Toward the end of her life, I would visit her in the nursing home four days a week. My brother Steve had the other three days.

   There were chores that I did, bringing her things she wanted or needed, running interference when needed with an evil room mate and indifferent staff.  It was taxing mentally and I didn’t always do a great job of not letting that show on my face.

   Well come to think of it, Mom would have seen through my efforts to hide or sugarcoat things.

   Anyway, one of the things I did was read to Mom from “Teach Us To Number Our Days,” by David Roper of Our Daily Bread Ministries out of Grand Rapids. God bless you David Roper!

   I lived in fear that careless staff would lose the book, until I wised up and began carrying it with me back and forth in the briefcase I always took to visits with Mom.

   The illustration on the front of the book is of a dandelion. Not the hail and hearty yellow dandelion in the full bloom of its youth, but of a failing dandelion, white with age and subject to the cruel winds of time.

   In the introduction, Roper wrote that he was 75 when he wrote the book. The copyright on it is 2008 So he is about 93 now. I can’t find anything online that notes his passing. So I believe he is still with us, numbering his days.

    The book contains 65 short stories, dealing with old age, how to survive it with the spirit intact, though the body increasingly is not.

   Roper comforted, challenged, reflected, encouraged. Mom and I recognized ourselves in those pages. I did not make an effort to remember or write down which stories we had already read. By that point Mom would not have remembered. Sometimes I didn’t either.

    Here I will include a shortened version  of one story, so you get a feel for the book. Though Roper numbered his days, he didn’t number his chapters!  The story that begins on page 28 is called, “My Staff.” He is referring to a walking stick, not employees. It begins with a poem by John Godfrey Saxe:

   “I’m growing fonder of my staff,

I’m growing dimmer in the eyes,

I’m growing fainter in my laugh,

I’m growing deeper in my sighs,

I’m growing careless of my dress,

I’m growing frugal of my gold,

I’m growing wiser, I’m growing – yes –

I’m growing old.”

    “There’s an antique rack in the entrance to our home in which we keep the canes and walking sticks of several generations of our family,” Roper wrote. “My favorite is a slender staff with a gold-plated knob, engraved with the initials ‘DHR.’ It belonged to Carolyn’s great grandfather, whose name was Daniel Henry Rankin. Curiously, my initials are the same.”

   “My study houses another stick collection my father’s peeled applewood walking stick and an ancient gnarled blackthorn shillelagh among others,” Roper wrote.

   “I think of old Jacob, worshipping and leaning on his staff. Like Jacob, I too am crippled, broken-down and ruined. I’ll always need something or someone to lean on.”

   “These days when I set out on an enterprise that seems daunting for me at my age, I take this staff along with me.”

   “When I note that my legs and heart have grown weaker and I can no longer wade swift streams, climb steep trails and surmount other difficulties, I strengthen my inner person with this thought: God will not cast me away when I am old, He will not forsake me when my strength is gone. My strength now is in ‘quietness and confidence.’”

   The story contains another poem this one by Ruth Harms Calkin

“Lord,

with a crooked stick for a cane,

I’m limping home.

      Mocked and maligned

      Stooped and stupid

      Soiled and Shabby

      I limp toward you.”

   In amazement, wonder and excitement, my mom greeted me upon one visit, with , “I’m 90!” Of course it was her 90^th birthday. She died at 91, six weeks short of 92.

   Most of our other discussions of her advanced age were not so cheerful.  I did my best to accentuate the positive, with love from a very deep Burton family well, and with the Blue Book.

   My voice, as I read, was halting at times, because I don’t see so well anyway, and especially through tears.

   Every dollar I ever sent to Our Daily Bread Ministries as part of my tithe, was paid back, and then some, with those shared moments reading to Mom.  Your financial contribution to Our Daily Bread, enable such moments.

   My copy of “Teach Us To Number Our Days” is falling apart now and I feel like I am too. But if so, I know God will pick up the pieces.