It's Wednesday!

Good morning I spoke to my sister that lives in the NE last night. She had spoken to my mother that day and the news was both sad and funny. My father refuses to eat. He didn't have much taste left before all this happened because of - the Dr.'s believe - type II diabetes induced neuropathy. So now that he is unable to get around and in a place he doesn't like where the food is REALLY not palatable - he doesn't want to eat. This is also a common occurrence among those elderly who are preparing to die, either consciously or unconsciously. He is fairly lucid in that he can understand what is being said and react to it, although he can't put a whole sentence together. When I was there on a pretty good day last Saturday, he would be listening to you for a moment and then his eyes would "turn off" - they would fix on nothing and you could see it was as if he had fallen asleep with his eyes open. This whole dying experience is very strange - and I'm watching it all very carefully, applying the precepts I've learned from my Bible study over the years - and wondering what is really happening in there - by which I mean inside my father's soul. Of course, I'm doing this because someday, if the Rapture doesn't occur, I will be in similar circumstances. We all die - none of us makes it off this planet alive.

Oh - the funny part? My mother told my father that his daughters love him. His response? "Well, I should hope so." I think that answer illustrates that a big part of what made my father the person he was is gone. It seems an answer he would have given in the past if he were being told about a stranger and their family, not his own family. One day recently a nurse came in to give him some sort of heart test - and when she approached him and told him what she was doing, after being prodded for a moment he said, "I expect I'll have to", with a look that was somewhat resigned. But what struck me is that he spends most of his time "off" somewhere - and when someone forces him back to physical reality, he responds with resignation and some surprise as if he had just woken up.

This whole experience is teaching me something I thought I knew already, but now I REALLY know it - that the things the human race thinks are important are a joke. It absolutely amazes me that people can be so stupid. None of us are going to live a terribly long life - not like in Genesis, where the first people racked up 800 and 900 years! We have at most, about 80 good years if the gene pool crap shoot isn't against us and we survive the rest of the gauntlet that is daily life. So really - what is it all about? God has the answers in the Bible. Abraham and David went to be "with their fathers" as we will, awaiting the eternal future God has for all human beings. Even famous people like Presidents die. Yes, we remember George Washington, but what good does that do for George Washington? I could see if every time someone thought about you, it brought you back to life for that time - people would go nuts trying to make sure they were remember by everyone. There would be agencies whose whole purpose was to recall your name constantly so you could continue existing somehow. But that is not how it works.

When I go to work today, I will be amongst hundreds of people, most jockeying for power and importance, stepping on others where expedient for them. And for what? All of them will be where my father is in not too many years - or a similar experience. Were some of the people in wheelchairs that I saw the other day at the nursing home "important" during their lives? Were some administrators or other types that have power over other human lives? If so, look where they are now - their former power is gone and they have been equalized. It doesn't much matter there whether you are male or female anymore. You are another old person needing care. Period. All the gender based nonsense and work based nonsense, all the sex and dreams of success - is in the past for these people. Only eternity awaits.

As I go about my job today, I'll be shaking my internal head at the antics I see. I've always done that anyway, but with my father's approaching death, it is even more so. The reality of our lives doesn't make me want to shove as much "fun" as possible into the rest of my alloted days - it makes me want to, more than ever, make the days count for eternity - to do God's will to the best of the ability He gives me, until the end. Nothing else has any meaning whatever. Nothing.