Q My dad has been living with me for the past three years and while I love him and have entered into this arrangement willingly, I am feeling more and more resentful of my siblings. I have a brother and a sister, both live close to me and neither one of them offer to give me a break. I don’t understand how they can just go on with their lives and leave me here to do all of the caregiving. I am afraid I will unintentionally take out my frustration on dad. What should I do? (From a daughter in Janesville).
Category: Columns
‘Vision’ becomes better with age
One of the benefits of aging is that our vision improves so much.
What? You say you have more trouble reading the fine print on prescription bottles? And you need stronger light bulbs and magnifying glasses?
Oh, sure, but that’s not the kind of vision I’m thinking about. I’m thinking of hindsight. You know, they always say that hindsight is 20-20.
So here’s what’s so great about it. We have perspective now. We can look back at the things that drove us crazy with worry, like a messy house when guests arrived. But now we know that it was never the picture-perfect house that mattered, but the warmth of our hospitality.
West Africa desperately needs your help
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Imagine being very hungry nearly all the time. Imagine telling your children to wait until the end of the day to eat a very small meal. Imagine eating every other day. Imagine not eating at all.
Very sadly, over 18 million people in West Africa’s Sahel region — an area between the Sahara Desert and the African tropics — do not have to imagine severe hunger; they are either experiencing it, or getting very close to it.
Crises have grown
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Food and nutrition crises in the region have grown in frequency and severity in recent years, mostly driven by sporadic rainfall, insufficient local harvests, high food prices, and insecurity.
Moving parents to another city
Q My mother lives in northern Illinois. This is home, where we grew up. My mom is in her late 80s, dad died several years ago. My mother gave up the family home and moved into an apartment and has been doing okay, but recently she has been telling me how she is losing so many of her friends. She feels alone.
I am thinking about asking her to move in with me. My brother and sister live in California and Georgia and I know she would not want to live in either of those states.
I wonder if living with me would help her feel less lonely and help me feel less guilty about not always being there for her. (From a daughter in Wausau).
The priest: in persona Christi
I met a young priest in Fairfax, Va., last week. Of course “young” is a relative term. Everyone around me gets younger with each passing year.
Father Jaffe had been at the parish for less than a week and was the priest on call for the local hospital. It was 2 a.m. when his pager went off. A couple had lost their eight-year-old son hours before and the mother wouldn’t let go of his body.
All attempts of the staff and hospital chaplain to get her to release her son had failed. She sat rocking him, unresponsive to anyone. The woman wasn’t Catholic, but the staff knew from experience that it was time to call in a priest.
When the newly ordained 26-year-old arrived, he did the only thing that came to mind. He sat with the parents in silence for a moment and said, “It looks like you need some prayer.” He opened his rite book, The Pastoral Care of the Sick to the section with the prayers for the deceased and he began to pray aloud.
Judges on board deserve our thanks
It is difficult to think of a scandal as a good thing. But the scandal triggered by violations of election and lobby laws 10 years ago, that led to reforming state regulation of both activities, had a positive effect.
One such reform merged the State Elections Board and the State Ethics Board into a new Government Accountability Board (GAB) with different membership. This has proven to be a very good thing.
Most members of the former Elections Board were designees of partisan leadership in the legislature. Board members did their best, but they had limited powers and were often expected to represent the interests of partisan leaders who appointed them.
Funerals: Not a time for remorse but celebration
When I was a kid back in the 30s and 40s, Grandma often came for a visit, always dressed in black, and usually it was a funeral that brought her to town.
I thought that was so weird. Did she enjoy funerals? Was that the only thing on her social calendar?
Well, guess what? I’ve arrived at that age when I open the paper first to the obituary page. First I check out to see if there’s someone I know. Then, I average the ages to see how I’m doing.
On a good day I’m younger than any of them. On a bad day I’m older. Too often, it seems, I find a friend has passed and I feel a stab of pain for the spouse and I want to express my sympathy and attend the funeral.
Final salvation at last
When I recently attended the funeral of my dear friend Betty, it occurred to me that funerals are really good for us seniors. They remind us of our own mortality, of course.
Making America truly beautiful
One of America’s greatest blessings is the Declaration of Independence. Its preamble reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
For years, America failed to live up to some of the noble principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence. One of these failures was tolerating legalized slavery. In 1865 the 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery as a legal institution. But after slavery was abolished, many former slaves were denied some of their God-given rights in other ways.
For years women were also denied the right to vote. In August of 1920, 144 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote.
The Almighty has done great things for us
On behalf of Bishop Robert C. Morlino and all our seminarians, I would like to congratulate Deacons David Johannes and Mark Miller on their upcoming ordinations to the priesthood.
The entire Diocese of Madison rejoices because the Lord has shown us great favor in calling these two men to be numbered amongst the Levites. I also want to extend our congratulations to Deacons Vince Brewer and Garrett Kau who were ordained to the transitional diaconate in May. We wish you all fruitful ministry in the Lord’s vineyard.
God works in our midst
Ordination of men to the priesthood is a good reminder to us of how God continues to work in our midst. The Holy Spirit working through the bishop, by his imposition of hands and prayer of ordination, raises these men to become in effect “Alter Christus.”
The hidden power in our suffering
In a 1999 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, patients with serious illness were asked to identify what was most important to them during the dying process.
Many indicated they wanted to achieve a “sense of control.” This is understandable. Most of us fear our powerlessness in the face of illness and death.
We would like to retain an element of control, even though we realize that dying often involves the very opposite: a total loss of control, over our muscles, our emotions, our minds, our bowels, and our very lives, as our human framework succumbs to powerful disintegrative forces.