I bought several green bananas for my Mom the other day. It was an act of faith, and of gratitude.
My mother is 97-years-young, you see…and just back from a four-day stay in her local hospital – working through, with the help of medical professionals, a complex set of metabolism issues.
Things are looking up for her today. But when you’re 97, any medical condition is a serious one, and any purchase of yet-to-ripen fruit, a bit of a risk.
We figure one way to lessen the risk (and keep things from “going pear-shaped in a hurry”) is to provide more help for our fiercely independent matriarch. With her once-bright eyes now often betraying her, Mom can’t quite see to cook and bake. Other daily-living tasks are problematic, too. So my brothers and I made arrangements for a paid aide to assist, starting this week.
But that, of course, left a bit of a gap to be covered – between her hospital discharge on Wednesday and the commencement of her in-home help. So we put out a call (actually, an email) inviting all of our “sorta local” family members to pitch in as they were able. I have to say the response was impressive: More than two dozen 24X7 “shifts” to fill…and this loving family of ours made it happen, on very short notice.
It’s as if our dear Momma (and Grandma and Great-Grandma) has in these recent days been “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses”. And not just family members, but neighbors and hospital employees and fellow parishioners – all working together to help her “persevere in running the race that lies before” her. All of us, living out the promise we encounter in the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews proclaimed this Sunday.
Surely this is something to be grateful for. Surely, it should feed our faith, too – and keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, just as does a certain 97-year-old I know pretty well. Yes, we see how there are ways in which Mom now shares in the cross of human frailty that Christ once endured. Still, she does not seem to “grow weary and lose heart.” Rather, each new day brings her a new measure of Christ’s joy.
Both joy…and the plucky courage to ask a son to go shopping for a few green bananas.
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 