Faith Works 1-9-2026
Jeff Gill
More questions than answers as a new year starts
___
January 9th is the 113th birthday of Richard Nixon; my brother Brian shares the date, if half the years with him.
Brian also often reads my columns to our mother, which gets complicated if I write about her and the living situation we're working with, so I find myself trying to put a signal in pretty early that this isn't one you want to be reading to her. Like this one.
Mom had been living with our sister Debbie for almost five years when one year ago we teamed up to move her into a memory care facility. It was a difficult decision, but a necessary one. We knew from the start that our mother was having cognitive issues after our father's death in 2020, and one of many things I've learned about the last few years is how the horizon between cognitive decline and outright dementia is a jagged and trackless landscape.
Over the last two years, I went from my father-in-law's last decline, which included a fair amount of visual and auditory hallucinations, to my mother's slide into mental hallucinations of facts that are demonstrably not so, but firmly held by her. Yes, the conventional wisdom is to agree at almost all costs, but some assertions are harder to agree with than others.
What's morbidly fascinating is how our mother's particular form of dementia is convincing. If you don't know her, she can still convince people she's still teaching classrooms full of children, under the direction of her father as school principal (my mother is 90, so do the math), and driving. Sadly, she's also convinced she can catch a bus or train right outside that door, the door over there, if you'll just hold it open one moment…
In some ways, I've been more ready to deal with the oddities of cognitive issues because of some forty years of pastoral ministry. I've had all the conversations, about whether someone should still drive, when you continue treatment, how to handle care provisions in various forms of insurance and benefits, Medicare or Medicaid. Yet it's different when you are dealing with your own parents, no matter how familiar.
And the fact of the matter is that many of these frameworks themselves have changed over the last few years. I knew enough over time to check in with trusted doctors and nurses about what "everyone knew" about how long you could stay in rehab, or what was covered by which; by the time I had to leave full-time ministry in 2020, some of those wise advisors were saying to me "I can't answer that, it changes so quickly now."
I've talked about pieces of all of this through the previous year, and I know it has a certain quality of repetition to it, but I wanted to walk through this to make the same point, especially to the many readers I know I have who attend worship services and look to ministers for answers about practical matters. It's not just them: none of us are entirely clear about how this all works. Hospitalization and rehabilitation and palliative care and hospice, insurance coverage and Medicare options and Medicaid involvement: it all changes so quickly now.
So what's the answer? First, leave assumptions go for the most part. Second, listen closely to what you're being told. Third, keep notes (in whatever form works for you, but a small notebook & pen are invaluable). Fourth: ask questions, ask questions, ask questions. And when caregivers or staff get impatient with your questions? Ask more.
This subject isn't going away, and not just because I'm in the middle of it myself. We all need to learn how to be people of faith working within often blind and unhearing systems. Clergy and church leaders don't have answers, but we can and must help ask questions.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; he's got questions, as you can tell. Tell him what your questions are at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow him @Knapsack on X.
Jeff Gill
More questions than answers as a new year starts
___
January 9th is the 113th birthday of Richard Nixon; my brother Brian shares the date, if half the years with him.
Brian also often reads my columns to our mother, which gets complicated if I write about her and the living situation we're working with, so I find myself trying to put a signal in pretty early that this isn't one you want to be reading to her. Like this one.
Mom had been living with our sister Debbie for almost five years when one year ago we teamed up to move her into a memory care facility. It was a difficult decision, but a necessary one. We knew from the start that our mother was having cognitive issues after our father's death in 2020, and one of many things I've learned about the last few years is how the horizon between cognitive decline and outright dementia is a jagged and trackless landscape.
Over the last two years, I went from my father-in-law's last decline, which included a fair amount of visual and auditory hallucinations, to my mother's slide into mental hallucinations of facts that are demonstrably not so, but firmly held by her. Yes, the conventional wisdom is to agree at almost all costs, but some assertions are harder to agree with than others.
What's morbidly fascinating is how our mother's particular form of dementia is convincing. If you don't know her, she can still convince people she's still teaching classrooms full of children, under the direction of her father as school principal (my mother is 90, so do the math), and driving. Sadly, she's also convinced she can catch a bus or train right outside that door, the door over there, if you'll just hold it open one moment…
In some ways, I've been more ready to deal with the oddities of cognitive issues because of some forty years of pastoral ministry. I've had all the conversations, about whether someone should still drive, when you continue treatment, how to handle care provisions in various forms of insurance and benefits, Medicare or Medicaid. Yet it's different when you are dealing with your own parents, no matter how familiar.
And the fact of the matter is that many of these frameworks themselves have changed over the last few years. I knew enough over time to check in with trusted doctors and nurses about what "everyone knew" about how long you could stay in rehab, or what was covered by which; by the time I had to leave full-time ministry in 2020, some of those wise advisors were saying to me "I can't answer that, it changes so quickly now."
I've talked about pieces of all of this through the previous year, and I know it has a certain quality of repetition to it, but I wanted to walk through this to make the same point, especially to the many readers I know I have who attend worship services and look to ministers for answers about practical matters. It's not just them: none of us are entirely clear about how this all works. Hospitalization and rehabilitation and palliative care and hospice, insurance coverage and Medicare options and Medicaid involvement: it all changes so quickly now.
So what's the answer? First, leave assumptions go for the most part. Second, listen closely to what you're being told. Third, keep notes (in whatever form works for you, but a small notebook & pen are invaluable). Fourth: ask questions, ask questions, ask questions. And when caregivers or staff get impatient with your questions? Ask more.
This subject isn't going away, and not just because I'm in the middle of it myself. We all need to learn how to be people of faith working within often blind and unhearing systems. Clergy and church leaders don't have answers, but we can and must help ask questions.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; he's got questions, as you can tell. Tell him what your questions are at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow him @Knapsack on X.
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