The Cultural Norms of Growing Old

You don’t know what you don’t know.

But it’s much easier to recognize another’s deficit when one is abundant in that same area. Everyone’s idea of normal is different, but where they might lack grace to imagine the possibility of my normal, I can easily imagine theirs by visualising a loss in my own reality. That’s my very wooly, melancholic way of providing an overhead view of the familial microculture which fundamentally shaped my worldview and character; the choices that have instinctually directed my life are often alarming to others when our moral and cultural ideological paths wildly diverge.

For context, I have nine siblings, five of whom are married with children. I am the joyful aunt to seventeen nieces and nephews — so far. Every job I’ve ever had has involved children. I’ve been a babysitter, nanny, tutor, and finally an elementary school librarian. I love children. So is it ironic that, for the past five years, my life and schedule has revolved around being one of several primary caregivers to my elderly grandmother? Don’t mistake me; I love her dearly and there is much food for thought in examining the many similarities between the beginnings and endings of life. At the surface level, however, a newborn baby and an old woman don’t present quite the same picture.

My father’s mother moved into my parent’s home in May 2020. Immediately prior, 100 years old and with bad knees and dementia, she was living in a locked memory unit at a care home. Because of COVID restrictions, she was for the first time in her busy, social life completely isolated from family and friends. She would normally receive multiple visits a day from various family members. We fed her, took her on excursions, and spent time together — Grandma was the expert of loving through showing, she loved easily with her whole heart, and she loved everyone. We were simply extending to her what she had been the first to extend to us — the first tentative roots of that family microculture?

Of the residents, my grandma was one of the lucky ones. It was a dismal, depressing place. It smelled of pee, the residents wandered listlessly like zombies, you could hear crying, mumbling, sometimes even shouting. If we didn’t come to feed her, or give her water, she likely wouldn’t have either that day. There was minimal supervision because they were understaffed. And this was one of the better care homes, which my aunt had chosen after diligent research.

During COVID, all visits stopped, and Grandma gave up on life because in her mind, her family had abandoned her. What was the point? She had a bad fall, and became bedridden, refusing to eat or drink. Administrators called her children, informing them she was dying. What did they want to do? It only took one visit for my parents to insist she be moved in with them. She would not die alone. And so Grandma moved into my parent’s home, and Grandma came back to life. It’s been five years now, and she has spent all five of those years living at the very heart of our rambunctious, joyful, chaotic family. During that time, she’s met a dozen great-grandchildren who were born, loving and being loved in return.

My aunt, mom, sister, and I are Grandma’s primary caregivers. We have spent the past five years on “Grandma duty”: sharing a schedule of feeding, cleaning, bathing, toileting, dressing, and supervision that is supplemented by three daily visits from subsidised home care. It is hard — sometimes brutally and devastatingly so. She is not the Grandma of my youth, who took me and my sisters on weekly mall adventures well into her eighties, rejoicing in our silly, hysterical antics. No, this Grandma does not know my name, she does not always trust me, or want me to touch her. She has tried to hit me, bite me, and has called me terrible names because she is mostly lost in her own mind and terribly afraid.

And yet.

I love her constantly and fiercely, apart from any emotional ups and downs. The best way I know how to love her is from how she loved me — to give of myself, to be patient, to be present, to take my time, and to touch her with kindness because she is physically fragile and her skin bruises the deep burgundy and black of pooling blood if you move too quickly and press too harshly. Five years ago, I made a verbal commitment that I would care for her until her death. I did not know she would live for five more years. I do not regret it. Reflecting on who I was and how this has shaped me, I am so grateful to a good and loving God who allows for hardship and suffering because he makes all things good. There is a verse from Jeremiah, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future (29:11).” Caring for Grandma has given to me – in grace and growth – more abundantly than anything I could ever give of myself to her.

Recently, we thought Grandma was going to die. For one long, endless, breathless night, we thought it was imminent. My family and I sat for hours by her bedside as she lay gasping for breath. Periodically, she would stop breathing, and we would all stop too, waiting. In the dark stillness of her room, kneeling on the hardwood floor, praying and holding the hand of a dying woman, I realized that her death would break my heart. This was a revelation to me because I had felt guiltily that it would be something of a relief for her to die – guilt stemming from a fear that the relief would mostly be motivated by shedding the burden of her care and not just from the cessation of her suffering. Those brutal hours on my knees beside her bed showed me the depths that God has worked in my heart without my conscious awareness. Much of the time, I struggled to feel anything other than burdened or dutiful while caring for Grandma, but the lessons of my childhood had taught me to offer it up to Him. I also knew from those same lessons that there is no greater gift than service to others and giving of oneself. And most importantly, you shouldn’t rely on the emotion to do the action. Unbeknownst to me, the actions were changing my heart and forming in me a new depth of incomprehensible love. The choices I made every day to put another before myself changed my very character. I became a less selfish person. Imagine that.

So, back to the beginning. You don’t know what you don’t know.

Five years ago, I didn’t know much. I was more selfish, lost and lonely, less loving and open and kind. But the normal I grew up with had formed me just enough to know that family, relationships, and people are the most important priorities in life. Loving others is what makes life beautiful; love means actions and service, generosity and selflessness. I knew this was not the norm for the culture at large. Ours is a society that kills the youngest and oldest members indiscriminately because of utility or desire — the thinnest and most selfish of excuses. But for the elderly, there is an even darker path. Everyone dies, but with love and patience and generosity, a good and peaceful death is a gift within us to give. Five years into caring for Grandma, striving to give her a good death, it breaks my heart to know even more clearly the norm is deliberate and destructive ignorance in this regard. We shun the weak and destroy the vulnerable.

Taking care of my dying Grandma is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It has beaten me down, leaving me emotionally and physically fragile. The exhaustion I felt the week of Grandma’s near death was so profound and draining, I couldn’t rest, afraid I wouldn’t be able to continue. I would change nothing. The joyful, incandescent gratitude I feel for these five years is indescribable. It is the tangible experience of God’s mercy and loving grace. If you know you know. But a culture of people that does not know their God, cannot give what they do not have. I can see so clearly what they lack, because I am so abundantly blessed. How can you imagine the sun if all you have ever known is darkness? Of course you would fear it, hate it to hear it described, or even shrink from seeing it the first time. The love of Christ crucified is similarly terrifying.

Lord Jesus, change our hearts so that we might love as you love, dying to ourselves and protecting and serving the weakest and most vulnerable in our midst.

Nora (Sally) Woodard died peacefully on March 1, 2025. She was at home, with her two children, Joe and Elisa, daughter-in-law Kathy, and son-in-law Dan. Her last words were, “I’ve always known my children love me.”