Circle of Life

I just got back from taking my daughter to the oral surgeon. She is eighteen. It was time to get the wisdom teeth out. I wanted her to have the procedure while she was still on my insurance. I also wanted her to have them out before they did serious damage to the investment of several thousand dollars worth of years of orthodontia.

I remembered, as I waited for Laura to undergo the procedure, being a late teen getting my wisdom teeth out. I thought about how my mother had waited for me at one time. It was a moment of looking back on the past.

The present penetrated my thoughts in an instant. It struck me that this would be one of my last acts as a caretaker with a dependent still in her home. My oldest children have moved on; one married in Norfolk; the other in his second year of college. Life is moving on, and these occasions which have lessened, would soon cease.

While I was reminiscing, the door opened at the distant end of the corridor to the outside parking lot. In ran a young boy around 4 or 5 years old. He ran down the long hall toward the waiting area in which I sat. Next in was an elderly lady of 85+ years. She struggled through the door leaning heavily on a walker, her son, the father of the little boy, right beside her. The youngster made several trips skipping back and forth the length of the corridor while grandmother slowly, laboriously made her way to the waiting area. The father, holding the arm of his elderly mother to steady her, kept his eyes on the 4 year old "bing-bonging" back and forth.

I thought of how my mother and father were not yet in need of that type of assistance, but might be someday. I likely will be a caretaker once again; possibly with an elderly parent residing in my home. After all, my mother is tending to my grandmother at this writing. I may have a few years of only taking care of my dog. But someday, in a decade or so, I may be taking care of one or both of my parents. Then I thought, in four or five decades I will likely be the 85+ elderly lady struggling down the corridor leaning heavily on a walker.

To wax a little sentimental, in my reflections I remembered the love chapter of Corinthians..."and these remain, faith, hope and love and the greatest of these is love." I prayed that I would love well those around me throughout the ages life.