On Visitation

A significant part of my new job is visitation---home/hospitality visits (of the get acquainted kind), hospital and homebound visits. The senior pastor here says that visitation is definitely not his gift and is very grateful to have someone to pick up that task. I also know from personal experience that visitation is simply not something that a senior pastor has much time to do. There are many many other concerns in a given week, from funerals to meetings, from worship preparation to interacting with parishioners on the business of the church.

Now that I do not have all those other concerns, I find that I am enjoying visitation more than ever! I never disliked it; just always felt the pressure of so many things to do. Yesterday I visited Grace and Russ, ninety and ninety three. Grace seems more like she is thirty. She has this to say:

It is not how old you are, but how you are old.

I am going to try to take that to heart. She is inspirational; lively, engaging, interested in the world and people, cheerful. This, despite having to do a lot of home care for her husband, who is in a wheelchair. They do have home health aids that come in to help, but I know that there are times when it must be physically challenging for her. She is a tiny little thing, and he is a very tall man. They had lifts under the feet of the couch to make it higher, and easier for him to stand. When I sat on the couch next to him, my feet dangled about two feet from the floor!

It was fascinating that despite having lived ninety three years, it seemed that the four most significant years of his life, which his wife said he always wanted to talk about, were his years in North Africa and Italy during World War II. In fact, he gave me his memoir to read, about those years. He served with General Patton!

I actually think that the older folks enjoy having an older pastor visit. Perhaps the biggest surprise to me is how much they appreciate it!

Come to think of it, visiting is fast becoming a dying art. What a loss!