Just stop and be. . .

"Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans." -John Lennon

I just spent part of this afternoon with my sweet but senile grandfather. He lives in an assisted living community, because of his degenerating Alzheimer's condition. He sometimes refers to me as his daughter, and tells the exact same stories within the span of a few minutes. Morris Johnson, proud of his Swedish heritage and life as a farmer and postman; he tries to hang on to his memory and dignity, as monotony and boredom seem to make them slip away.

For a long time in his stuffy apartment, I carefully look through the family photo albums. Pictures from my dad's childhood, ugly 60's outfits and hairdos, my dad with acne before his prom and graduation. My grandparents in black and white, courting and dating just after the war; my grandma, a newly graduated nurse, my grandpa, a college dropout taking over the family farm. My aunts and uncles at all different ages, and sometimes, me and my cousins turn up near the end of photo albums, awkward preteens with glasses, or small babies and toddlers immersed in piles of fall leaves.

Morris, my patriarch, has lived so much life. And now that he lives alone, confused and forgetful, missing my grandma after her death, what is he living for? Has he lived a full life? Is he still valuable to us, or have we put him away in this place so that we don't have to deal with him and his aging and degenerating state?

Sometimes I think we live so fast in this culture so that we don't have to think about death. The day after my grandma died three years ago, we went back to life as usual, we didn't even take time to grieve. We didn't know how to cope with her absence, let alone have it remind us of our own mortality.

Lately, I keep searching frantically for some raison d'etre, some overarching purpose or meaning to my life. And of course, I am constantly afraid that I am missing it. I'm not living life fully enough. I might be missing something right in front of my eyes.

But as I was driving home on the country roads after visiting my grandpa, I was astounded by the gorgeous wildflowers that sprang up on both sides of the road; purple, yellow and orange everywhere. I was reminded of the verse, I think somewhere in Matthew, that talks about the birds of the air and the flowers of the fields. We always interpret that verse as how we ought to trust this deity for everything. And maybe so. But perhaps something else we should learn from the birds and the flowers is to emulate their ability to just BE. They don't work and stress and worry and everything else; they just ARE. They simply exist, in all their beauty. They just are.

I'm always looking so hard for new possibilities and hoping not to miss my great calling, that I often forget to just LIVE.
So, just stop and learn how to live. That's my great calling for right now.