The Summer of 1986 - My Ultimate Lesson in Love - Part I

The Summer of 1986 – My Ultimate Lesson in Love – Part I

I spent the summer of 1986, the months between my junior and senior years in college, with my paternal grandparents who were really my parents.  In November 1967, in their early sixties, my grandparents had recently built a small house where they expected to enjoy the autumn of their lives as they grew old with each other.  A knock was heard at the door.  Upon opening it, they found my father, my six siblings and me standing in the cold waiting to come in.  In retrospect, I surmise that my grandparents had to have known that they had agreed to adopt us when they said yes to my father’s proposal that we stay with them until he “got back on his feet and return to get us.”  Prior to our arrival, my beloved grandparents had already informally adopted two of our cousins.  Within months, they expanded from a couple to eleven persons in a small four bedroom house with very limited square footage.  What a radical change in life!  They were careened from the blissful autumn of their lives to the heat of summer in child rearing again. 

Ranging in age from six month old to twelve years old, the nine of us required the same careful attention given to tending a garden in the mugginess, humidity and haziness of June, July and August.  Spanning the gamut from fertilizing our personalities in diapers to potting training to sowing seeds of love in toddlerhood to enriching the soil of our characters in early childhood development to the emotional weeds of the middle school years to the crabgrass of adolescence and early adulthood, our beloved paternal grandparents were faithful and valiant stewards of the garden of their “second family.”  Yes, they were our relatives.  However, I incalculably value their genuine labor of love as one of the clearest examples of the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ that I have experienced.  At the time of their deaths in January and June of 1989, we had matured to adulthood.  The six month old infant was a twenty-two year old Private First Class in the United States Army.  As I approached the end of my collegiate years, I more greatly appreciated the selfless sacrifice that my grandparents made for my cousins, siblings and me.  Upon realizing the tremendous existential costs not to mention the lavish expenditures of finances, time, and subordination of personal wishes, I wrote to my grandparents to formally thank them for their immeasurable generosity and limitless love.  However, a letter hardly seemed to suffice to express my heartfelt gratitude.  I greatly desired to concretize my thankfulness.  With the practically non-existent budget of a college student, I found the means to travel back home and spend the summer of 1986 with them.

Upon my scheduled arrival on June 13^th, I enthusiastically greeted my grandfather at the door.  This time, as an adult collegian, I entered the house with the attention of living my gratefulness by caring for them throughout the summer break.  In exchange for their incredible gift, I sought to be a gift to them in their time of need.  My grandmother, having dealt with the long-term, cumulative effects of progressive diabetes, was now very ill.  “Momma” was never diagnosed officially as having Alzheimer’s disease but senility had solidified by the time I arrived.  Her most lucid hours were eight in the morning until noon.  Afterwards, her immediate memory or recall of current events receded to the deep recesses of her mind.  Even as I write, it is most difficult to accept that she did not know my name in the end.  Compounding those physical “complaints” as she called them was the daily incontinence which robbed this very proud and fastidious woman of her remaining dignity.  In many ways, it was most merciful that she did not fully realize this aspect of her illness.  Summarily, her care required the same dedication as nurturing a newborn.  At minimum, laundry was done twice a day; sometimes thrice.  Emptying bed pans and a bedside toilet was commonplace.  Preparing three meals on a rigid schedule and serving them in a ritualistic manner from which you could not deviate lest you disrupt her daily rhythm were also normal factors.  Additionally, she had to be awoken at the exact same time each morning; offered a nap after lunch and put to bed after dinner with meticulous accuracy. 

Whereas I labored in love for approximately eighty days that summer, the previous obligations, schedule and routine comprised my grandfather’s daily life.  In fact, the last five years of his life were consumed with the constant and increasingly challenging care of my grandmother, his beloved wife of fifty-seven years.  Yet, that summer, I relieved him.  I made myself available to them at any time of night or day.  I structured a semblance of a social life completely around their needs.  With stalwart determination, I attempted to attend perfectly their every need by answering each beck and call whether morning, evening or middle of the night.  As life’s inherent irony would unfold, I dedicated this summer to living the love that had grown in my heart during the years of my young life; as I did so, I would receive the ultimate lesson in love.