Getting a driver’s license is the symbol of independence for
young people. Giving up the car keys is
the opposite for older adults.
Several years ago I was speaking to a group of older adults
in a retirement center about the changes we could expect. When I finished, a woman told me the old man
sitting beside me had wept as I read the following prayer-poem from my book Prayers of an Omega. Just that week he had given up driving and
still felt lost, despondent.
I sure liked to drive
my car
Lord, this morning I turned in my license to drive. I put it
in an envelope and wrote a note saying I wasn’t going to drive anymore. The kids patted me on the back and said, “Great,
Dad. Good decision. We’re all for you. Then they drove the car away.
I think I felt at relieved. At ease.
No more worrying whether I’d make the left turn onto the
highway before another car zoomed by. No
more worrying whether I’d see the little girl on the bicycle behind me. No more
worrying whether the elusive shadows at night were pedestrians enjoying the evening
air.
But I miss the feel of a ring of hard keys in my pocket. I
reach for them, just to give them a caress. But they’re not there. I want to go
out and start the car. For no reason. Then I remember. The car is gone. I will
never back it out of the garage onto the road again. I will never again experience the engine
surging to full power with me at the wheel.
We always had a quiet life. Not much traveling. Others
talked about Disneyland and Yosemite, but we liked it here. At home. We had a car
to dash to the store to get milk for breakfast. To go to church. And to visit
the children. And to check on the waving wheat fields in early summer with
windows open. Slow, poky Sunday drivers, they called us. We didn’t mind.
The children say they’ll take me anywhere I need to go. Just
phone and they’ll come. But my longing to see that lilac bush welcome the
spring disappears when I have to squeeze a passing look at it between a dentist’s
appointment and a quick trip to the post office to catch the last mail.
Middle-aged children haven’t got time for nature’s all-out shout of welcome in
spring just yet.
Lord, I desperately want to know whether the redbuds bloomed
this spring on the street where we used to live. I want to know what color Jim
and Helen painted their house. I want to spend the afternoon driving – for no
reason.
Reach out your hand, my Lord, and place it here in the warm
hollow of my hand where I used to hold the keys.
Prayers of an Omega:
Facing the Transitions of Aging was published in 1994. I wrote it to give the gift of speech to
older adults who feel inadequate to speak to God for and about themselves in a
challenging situation. I tried to
incorporate a wide variety of experiences and feelings into these contemporary
psalms to be as open as the psalmists who poured out their feelings about the
enemy facing them or the God who was able to deliver them.
I grouped the prayers in five untitled divisions: the
transitions into the land of the aging, family life, specific changes an older
adult faces like moving to a nursing home, and the trials that challenge faith
like illness, loneliness, acceptance of mortality, and death.
I thank all adults older than I am for their
testimonies of faith that have strengthened me in my pilgrimage. They are my cloud of fire by day and pillar
of light by night.
