Journeys and generations

On a clear morning toward the end of June I drove my oldest son to the airport. He’d just finished his second year of university and was going to spend the summer working with friends in the US.  Traffic on the motorway was completely clogged, as expected, so we drove on the back roads of Sussex, meandering through fields and copses, hamlets and villages. There is a sort of dreamy vitality about England in the early summer, a freshness in the air, the bright green of the leaves, the bursts of colour from cottage gardens. One gets the sense of both fulfilment and unlimited potential, as though anything would be possible. Even the names of the places we drove through suggest the power of deep and grounded mystery; Cross in Hand, Buxted, Five Ash Down, Nutley, Wych Cross. We wound through deep cuttings in shade and out into bright sunlight and chatted about unimportant stuff. I tried hard, and with some success to not dispense too much advice. We stopped at a tiny shop to pick up a couple bags of snacks for the flight. We stopped again for a loo break, which took the form of peeing behind a bus shelter.

I care about fulfilment, purpose, meaning in life, finding a cause worth living for

In the drop off zone at Gatwick we did a final check; bags, travel docs, ticket. I gave him a hug and a kiss and he crossed the road and into the crowd up the moving walkway; a tall, fairly muscular young man, quite excited, somewhat nervous, not looking back. I was surprised to find myself in tears watching him, he was only going for a couple of months after all, but there was perhaps a leave-taking more significant; a symbolic letting go, sending him on his way with a blessing. It put me in mind of one of those Grimm fairy tales in which the young man leaves home with a loaf of bread and a leather flask of wine. I want so badly for him to do well. I don’t mean successful in the way this is usually understood, I don’t care so much what sort of job he gets or how much money he makes. I care about fulfilment, purpose, meaning in life, finding a cause worth living for. Finding a cause worth dying for. I mean hell, it does sound a little mawkish put like this, what can I say?

Driving home on the open, post rush hour motorway, I thought about my dad who died this past April, just one month shy of his 95th birthday. Our family had been increasingly involved in his care for the last 10 years as he gradually, almost imperceptibly changed from a sharp, vigorous elderly man able to go on walks, climb stairs and converse about anything to an increasingly frail and often confused person as his dementia slowly kicked in. We had a lot of fun with my dad those last years, a lot of laughs, and meals out, and time spent together. Our kids all got to know him very well, to accept his failing memory and occasional bad table manners.  

I resented his dementia, though. It’s a common experience for people caring for elderly family members. The person you know slips away, reappearing in flashes of decreasing regularity. My dad’s dementia was not even that severe; he almost always knew who I was, could still get around in his house, could take himself to the loo. There was a certain commitment to looking after him of course, but what I found most difficult was watching the decline, the confusion, the repeated stories, the loss of cognitive function, the reversal of roles in our relationship.

Of his repeated stories, the one I least cared for was his blow-by-blow account of how I left home when I was 19. It was not a happy time for either of us. I didn’t leave with any sense of adventure, I left confused, depressed, and more than a little angry. He had this idea that I should leave the nest, as it were, to live on my own. I didn’t want to go. Not an unusual story. And of course he was right, it was a good experience in retrospect. It was just bloody difficult at the time.

I realise now how worried my parents were about me. Their fear was not so much that I would get into trouble with the law or drop out of school, more that I would isolate myself from them, lose my Christian faith, be seduced by the idea of worldly fame, or hedonistic excess. I suppose, in fact, the same worries I have for my own kids. As a parent, worries are legion, and young adulthood, that step over the threshold into the terrible and thrilling jungle of what is sometimes called “the real world”, with its seemingly endless choices, endless anxiety, stress, opportunities, pressures, can be the most confusing time of one’s life. Small wonder, then, that my father, sitting in his armchair with a glass of whiskey and looking at me across the room, felt the need to go over that period in both of our lives.

Stories are the mechanism by which we make sense of life, and we use this language when we talk about ourselves; “my story”, “it’s a long story”, etc. It could be argued that the plot type of the story we see ourselves in defines the trajectory of our lives. Is my life a tragedy? a comedy? Battle with a monster? Rags to riches? I would say that my father saw his life as a quest, a quest for meaning and purpose that found its answer in the application of Christian faith. The fact that I had found a similar purpose was what gave him such joy in his later years, much as it annoyed me having him refer to it.

My dad fell a month or so before he died and never really recovered. It became clear fairly quickly that this was the end. It was not a sad time, though of course it was difficult. He was rarely agitated and very much at peace. He didn’t talk about dying, or say goodbye, or write a farewell letter. A couple of times he said to me “I don’t know what is happening to me.” He was unsure, perhaps of how to go about dying, how to step over that threshold; he didn’t know quite what to do with himself.He did know that he was going somewhere else, that there was a destination he needed to get to.

What happens to us after we die? Belief in the immortality of the soul did not originate with Christianity. The first writing about this is attributed to Plato but many if not all of the ancient faiths believed in some form of afterlife. Greek mythology features stories about Hades and the Elysian Fields. Egyptians similarly believed in Duat and the Field of Reeds. There is evidence from burial sites going back millennia of bodies being provided with goods for the journey. Atheists will cite this as evidence that all religions copy ideas from each other.  I would say it is evidence of a human connection and longing for the eternal that has always been present. It is, truly, the last big adventure and the one we know least about.

Like most young people, I never expected to reach middle age, and like most people there was a comically awful day of realisation when it dawned on me that I had; furthermore, that I was going to get old, and decrepit, and finally pop my clogs. I think about death now and then, I think about preparing for death, for eternity. How I live, how I act towards others is important. I would go so far as to say that my faith is important only to the extent that it affects the way I behave.

Our two older sons were there with my wife and me along with other family members the night my father died. He had an easy go of it, frankly, just never woke up, and he went so quietly that it took me a long time to accept that he was really gone. He had been asking for his shoes the day before, talking about getting ready to go out. I’m not saying it was a beautiful leave taking, death isn’t beautiful; it’s ugly and undignified. It’s also difficult, painful, brutal, final. It was special to be there notwithstanding, a moment I had been dreading and yet thank God to have been there for.

The very grimness of things creates the opportunity to be part of a glorious struggle

In the Christian tradition that I belong to we sometimes talk about the “upper church”, the body of believers that exists in eternity. No one knows what they get up to there, perhaps nothing more than praying, but it is not a position of rest. How could it be? The world continues to be broken, damaged, fallen. Most people I’ve talked to believe things are getting worse, not better. Fundamental to Christian belief is the idea of the final redemption of all things, but this has not yet taken place. The quest continues.

There is another story plot type from the list I mentioned above; the battle between good and evil.  

Perhaps somewhat paradoxically, the very grimness of things creates the opportunity to be part of a glorious struggle. To stand in the desolation and face the wrath of the dragon, confronting fear, lies, apathy, brutality, injustice, intolerance in all its forms. It’s the ultimate cause, the ultimate purpose, and I continue to pray that my son becomes part of this. I think my dad is praying for him as well.