Having an ailing 88 year old father who is separated from home physically and is suffering for it as he goes through rehab strikes a question of what I call the western medical paradigm. The assumption that someone gets better by going to the hospital is sometimes true but just as my dad would start to rest, a nurse would come and say, time for vital signs or here are your pills or are you in pain. Stupid at best. Not a place to rest or be “cared” for in this situation. A doctor warned us of the elderly entering the hospital for anything, pneumonia, surgery, stroke, would separate from the procedure often develop confusion. He said, “hospitals are not a nice place”. I write this wondering if there is a better way to treat our elderly than slapping them in the hospital.
Since people are dying in a village driven society like Zimbabwe, I know it takes some combination of technology and village to hold the keeping and/or passing of the aged.
The reason my dad has done as well as he has is that his children and grandchildren have flocked to his side and in turn have kept a 24 hour vigil. There is someone advocating for him 24 hours a day. We have taken the village to my dad. So maybe I am answering my own question of village.
We want to bring the chief home to his village. Though his village might be his ancestors and this might be his time to join them having lived a heroes life.
Malidoma thought at first that my ancestors were calling me home and then he said no you are providing a home. My dad has been a role model in providing a home for integrity and truth and family for 88 years. Perhaps he is tired and can now rest.
How much do we fight to live as we know life? It is hard to go so far away when my dad is being asked this question, “Is it my time.?” We are asking the question, “Is it his time?”
I will play twinkle twinkle little star for him from Zimbabwe and trust that all things happen as they should, as they will. And no matter what, we have loved him, not always well, but as well as we have known how.