Where Are Your Parents Tonight?

ONE EVENING A FEW YEARS AGO

my niece,Tami, and her husband Pete, who live in Washington state’s remote eastern Cascade Mountains, were preparing to leave their home when Pete noticed car lights in the distance in a place they shouldn’t be. The lights weren’t moving and it was dark winter. Investigating, he found an elderly man in a car in a ditch on a road seldom traveled.

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They took the man into their home, warmed him up, and were able to get his name and a telephone number from his wallet. They reached the man’s family, who were frantically looking for him in Seattle, where he lived. Somehow this gentleman, who suffered from dementia, had gotten the car keys and driven across state over a winding mountain highway and country roads to conclude his journey hours away from home in a remote snow-filled ditch, and having no idea where he was or how he got there.

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HAVE YOU EVER ASKED

“Where are the kids tonight?” “Who is he out with?” “Wasn’t she supposed to be home by eleven?” Have you thought to yourself, “Why didn’t someone warn us that raising kids would be this difficult before we decided to make them?” Now, remove the word “kids” and replace it with “parents.” See what I mean? The only difference is we don’t get to make our parents. They (we) just are. Now the kids have grown up and have kids of their own. But they also have us to figure out, worry about and keep track of as well. The modern elders.

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ON TOP OF EVERYTHING

adult children of aging parents are concerned with, now there is coronavirus. A 30% death rate is reported among people over 85 who are attacked by the virus. If you love your parents, that gives you concern. Especially knowing you can only keep them hunkered down for so long. If after two or three months they’re not sick, they want to be let out again. If dad or grandpa was shot at in Korea or Vietnam and lived, how much more dangerous can this be? While children and young adults may feel invincible, modern elders are more philosophical. Their seeming lack of concern may in reality be an inner peace.

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OVER TWENTY YEARS AGO

when I first began speaking to audiences of older adults, pastors and ministry leaders about “the second half of life,” the focus was on 50+ age boomers and builders. Even when I first began posting the blog, Perspective, I carried forward that age split made popular to the national drumbeat of AARP (American Association of Retired Persons). However, my understanding has morphed over these last several years.

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As I return once more to weekly blogging, I intend to reflect this change in conversations with you about life, not in first and second half terms, but rather in thirds, a pattern more closely resembling modern aging in the US and nations around the world. This has growing importance in how we relate to each other. Modern elders. Fresh perspective. More about this in future conversations.

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Whether you are a reader 60+ in age or the adult children of modern elders, join me each week in looking at life’s third age with all its spiritual and physical realities as a new beginning, not a dreaded demise. Yes, every good story must have an ending. So to in life. There are exceptions, but for a story, as in life, what we look for at the ending is its culmination, the full flower of a tale well written or a life well lived, even in—maybe especially in a broken world. It is the redeemed life the One True God offers to us all.[2]

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FULL DISCLOSURE

I am a follower of Jesus by confession and by calling. I have been in vocational ministry for over sixty years. My Christian and non-Christian friends who subscribe to Perspective, read my books or follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter understand this “bias” and continue to welcome me into their lives regardless. I am grateful and humbled by this. It’s been my privilege to live my days and years among many young and old who have felt uncertain or unloved or even abandoned by their religious heritage. Yet I can tell you with certainty we are all numbered among those the One True God loves. The key is opening our hearts to love him back. And that’s easy. He’s done the work already.

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I SEE THAT LAST WEEK

GAGE the wonder dog got hold of my iPad again. Yes, he’s a good dog, except when he’s not. He overheard that I plan on taking up the “word tools of humor, pros and poetry, reason and faith, facts and fiction—to create a conversation about and with people in life’s third age. The modern elders, the new retirees, even if they don’t have a dog.” And he was right.

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SO THIS REALLY IS A GREAT TIME

to invite your adult family members, your own e-list followers, a neighbor, or maybe even your pastor to subscribe to Perspective and join the conversation. Visit ?https://www.wardtanneberg.com/blog and tap the green “Get Insider Access” button. When you subscribe, Perspective automatically comes right to your email every week. It’s easy, only takes a minute and it’s FREE. I’m looking forward to our times together. If you have adult children, or other modern elders in your church or small group, invite them to join us both for a fresh Perspective on life’s third age.

“Who is your master? Where are you going? Who owns all this?”

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Where are your parents tonight? Let’s find out!