A Christmas Prayer for the Elderly in Assisted Care

Once a friend of mine, visiting in a nursing home for the elderly, said “Merry Christmas” at the bedside of a woman who then began to cry and said, “I didn’t know it was Christmas.” My friend was angry. She had heard Christmas music in the lobby, but there was none on the ward where the sick and infirm lay in rows.

This is an extreme case, I think. I hope. But there is my friend here who sometimes is bright and witty and other times cannot find her apartment. She also feels deserted by her family and has in the world only one person who comes to visit. Right now she, who wants people more than anyone else I know, is confined to her room, having tested positive for covid. I find it possible, even probable she has no idea that Christmas is near.

I want her to know that God has come to live with us, and the world is celebrating.

When you are really old, your life is mostly in the past, and you know it. And anyway, our holiday celebrations are based on tradition, the habits we developed through the years. We remember happily what we did before and do it again. So when we are old, Christmas is mostly Christmas remembered, with mates and family and friends, setting up the manger scene, hiding gifts, decorating a tree, going to church, making pies. All of these are still real in our minds. And the memories can make us sad or happy.

I want my friends in this community, to accept these memories as gifts, not things they have lost but things they still own and can be grateful for.

Christmas has often focused on the children. It is hard to think of Christmas without remembering childhood, and without recalling secrets we prepared for our own young ones. A memory comes to me now. Our Jan, at about age ten, caught wind of our secretiveness and said, “Adults have all the fun.” I thought it was clever of her to figure that out and interesting that she was jealous of the plotters, the givers.

Most of us when we are old remember both the magic of childhood and our adult labors, the work by which we made a living, our accomplishments, and the care for children, the rising early, the staying up late, the sacrifices freely made. It is important to most of us, when we are old, to know we didn’t waste all that effort but created happiness and made a good contribution to the world. Our children have grown up, have careers and children of their own. Our grandchildren are amazing, dashing around the world, changing it.

In old age it is good to think of our offspring and know that we did a good job, we gave them Christmases to remember, passed along our faith and values. In the process we gave the world people smarter than we are and a chance to be better. We would like to imagine them together now, at Christmas, the way we brought them together with cousins and friends when they were young.

I want my friends here to feel such accomplishments and be proud of what they did, including the smart, energetic people they have given the world.

I have noticed here in this very nice care community that people never stop missing “home,” whatever it was. The old place we inherited. The house we built or remodeled. Where we raised the children. Where we retired. Where all the family came together for special occasions. Actually, what we call home is only partly about a place and mostly about family, the togetherness.

Whatever it is, we tend to yearn for it. The accommodations and the service here have nothing to do with this. When we were young we wanted to see something new. Now that we are old we love familiar places and familiar faces. And there is no time when the idea of home has greater significance than at Christmas.

But we are in this new place for a reason, a valid, important reason. As I think about this, an Old Testament story pops into my head: Jacob waking up amazed in the desert with his head on a rock, saying, “Surely God is in this place and I didn’t know it.”

In the year I have been in this strange place I have noticed this same truth, and I have noticed also that just being grateful for the comfort and safety of the place where we are makes us happier. Maybe this just focuses the mind on a better place and leads to our sharing Jacob’s surprise.

I’m pushing gratitude and amazement.

Whether the elderly remain in their homes or live in special communities planned for them, they are likely to be a bit removed from events of the season: the buzz of planning, the whirls of activity, the smells in the kitchen, the secrets in the closet. Most will not see their families together even for a day, and for many this is the first Christmas in many years without the one person with whom they built a life. The honest truth is that professional health care, protection, food and service may not translate into love.

I just want my neighbors in the building to know they are remembered and loved, to know it and feel it.

With all of this in mind, I have composed a short prayer, and I am suggesting that you pray these things for the people you know and the people you don’t who are living in the somewhat artificial “home” where they will spend their last days, weeks, years.

A Christmas Prayer for the Elderly in Assisted Care

May they discover at Christmas that God lives with us here.

May they recall and treasure happy times in the past.

May they think of the younger people in their family with pride and hope.

May they be grateful for the comfort and safety of the place where they live.

May they know and feel that they are loved.

Let’s say it again in the opposite order: