Chaplain's Corner

Reminiscing is one of the therapies that our recreational therapists use in caring for the residents here at Bethesda Place.  It is a natural activity and one that people with dementia can enjoy as their long-term memories are often very acute as their short term memories fade away.  Reminiscing is all about thinking back and remembering a different time, many times a different place, when life was, well different that it is in the present.

Reminiscing is often an activity engaged when families gather.  Think back to your last family gathering.  Is there a story that is told just about every time you gather?  I know in my family there are those stories.  Some are funny, some are embarrassing, others are sad, but those stories form the fabric of the family and when someone marries into the family and hears the stories for the first time, they can really feel like an outsider, for so often the stories are not even fully repeated.  Some one will begin by saying, “Remember when Sally was in the barn…” and everyone laughs and people talk over one another and to the outsider this is all rather mysterious and chaotic, but because the story is so familiar, it doesn’t matter.
 
These are the stories that bind families together.  But reminiscing is not just an activity for the frail elderly or the fodder for family fun when the family gathers.  Reminiscing is educational, the stories of our lives are very important.  As we tell our stories, certain themes emerge.  Those themes reveal much about who we are and how we perceive life.

I’m starting to have faint thoughts of retirement.  As I look down the road, 8 years doesn’t seem so very far away and I am in that stage of life where time seems to be accelerating.  As I have fleeting thoughts of retirement, I have thoughts about what I might do with myself and one of the things I am planning to do is write my own story for my kids and grandchildren.  Now my story would never be a best seller and I doubt seriously if even my kids will be spellbound by most of it, but as I consider the milestone of retirement and the passage of my own life, I think of a gift I have longed for my parents to give that they never gave, the gift of a connection with my past.  So, I plan on giving that gift to my children and grandchildren.

Some of you may be thinking, “Larry, be careful what you wish for!” for you have a parent or grandparent who talks incessantly about the past, your family tree and genealogies and it all seems so boring.  But then, in my case there is so little that I know.  My father rarely spoke of his family.  I recall only two stories about his father and only two of his mother.  Both died before I was born.  We rarely visited family on my father’s side.  Imagine my surprise when in grade eleven I was called to the office over the schools PA system to arrive at the office to discover that two Larry Hirsts responded to the overhead page and the other one was my second cousin who I had never heard of and never met, even though we attended the same high school.

So, I am determined to leave my children and grandchildren a record of my life as I remember it.  I’m not real interested in writing my history in a formal, academic manner; but I do want to reflect on my life as I experienced it.  I want to do some organized reminiscing about what it was like to be Larry Hirst in my family and in this world.
 
In spiritual care we have a therapy we use at times called Life Review.  It is a set of questions that have been developed to assist a patient or resident think over the life lived for the purpose of understanding who they are and why they are the person they are.  The review often brings to light spiritual issues that are still quite raw and that need a healing touch.

However, in reality so few of us take that time to reflect.  To attempt to make some sense out of our lives, out of experiences, out of our responses to the world we live in.  There are some who believe that it is always wrong to look back.  Their motto is, “Never look back.”  Others believe that you can only successfully move forward if you understand your own past.  I personally believe that life is best lived by taking time to look back from time to time as we move forward. This is what reminiscing is about and this is what Life Review is about, moving forward, but taking time every now and then to look back so that we can understand our decisions as we move forward.

Maybe an example would be helpful.  One of the patterns in my life is that I can be deeply involved with a person, be “friends” but when circumstances lead us in different directions, never contact the person again.  That sounds so bad when I actually say it, but this is my pattern.  Now, I could continue just to look forward and the pattern would repeat itself time and time again.  But what if I look back for a few moments and ask the question, “I wonder why I do this?”

Well, from the time I was born (1953) till I settle in Winnipeg (1981) I moved 31 times.  Sometimes the moves were from one house to another house in the same community, but more often the moves were from one community to another.  When I left home at age eighteen, the longest I had lived anywhere was five years and many of the places I lived, as you might imagine, were much shorter.  During the first eighteen years of my life I attended four Grade School, two Jr. Highs and one High School.  After I left home at I spend four years in Phoenix in college, three years in Denver in Seminary and another three years in a small farming community in Saskatchewan before I settled in Winnipeg.
 
What I learned in all this moving about was that I needed to make friends quickly but then be able to cut the strings and move on just as quickly.  And that is what I do.  I am able to make friends quite easily but then when circumstances change and one or both of us find ourselves in other circumstances, I just move on.  I can’t imagine what some of the friends I have had over the years must have felt.  I’m sure a few of them were quite hurt when I didn’t even ask for an address so we could write or never bothered to call.

Having looked back and asked the question, I understand this rather strange behavior of mine.  At this point in my life I am able to understand the behavior, talk about it and even admit it openly to friends giving them fair warning of what probably lies ahead. I can’t say that much has changed in my behavior though.  The last time I moved 5 years ago, from one side of Winnipeg to the other, the same thing happened.  People I had served as pastor for 19 years, I haven’t spoken to since and feel no compulsion to reach out and get in touch.

But not all understanding is about change.  Sometimes the patterns are so deeply ingrained into the fabric of life that change doesn’t follow understanding, but understanding is valuable in itself and part of the purpose of reminiscing is to help us understand who we are, why we behave the way we do and what lies behind many of our attitudes.  And if God provides the inertia to change – then change is good.