What has no end?

What has no end? Well not this life…anyway.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”

Revelation 22:13

What has no end? God and God’s love is eternal. The other answer is “a doughnut.”

There’s a nice tall older gentleman in my water aerobics class. He’s in great shape for his age and never misses a class. As we were bobbing up and down in the water doing our required amount of leg kicks, he said to me, “Life expectancy in the USA is 70 years old. If you get there, be happy! That means you did good! It’s all downhill after that.”

People who are older and I mean obviously nearing the “end” insist that their day have a set beginning, a set middle and a set end. My mom likes to stick to an established routine. She does not desire any spontaneity in her life. Variety is a bad word ! She wants it all to be the same way, the same time every day. She even dislikes it if I’m pushing her in her wheelchair back to her room and I decide to take a different route. The minute I start to turn, her feet plant themselves down on the floor to stop the movement of the wheelchair and as I’m about to topple over her because of this abrupt move, she says “whoa, why are we going this way? No!!! I don’t want to go this way!”

There’s a nice old lady at Mom’s dining room table that must have chocolate ice cream for dessert every meal. About halfway through the meal, she starts wondering where her chocolate ice cream is. This lady never says anything else throughout the meal but half way through, she takes the big effort of holding her bony little hand up in the air and waving, she insists, “Where’s my chocolate ice cream? Where’s my chocolate ice cream? Chocolate ice cream? ” She says this over and over until someone notices and gives her some cold creamy chocolate ice cream! The same thing happens every day, “chocolate ice cream” like clockwork.

Another petite elderly lady with tiny little glasses and a big happy personality can suddenly turn into a big grumpy if her bath’s not on time. As I walk toward her she sighs “Oh, oh, oh, no”. Of course you and I both know that this means I should come over and touch her shoulder and ask her why. She can’t hear so I lean over and speak loudly into her ear, “What’s wrong?” She then scrunches up her wrinkly little lips, looks at me with sorrowful teary eyes and squeals “Oh they didn’t come and give me a bath today until three o’clock!” "it just ruined my day!" Her bath is supposed to be at two o clock. Old ladies always watch the clock! If you are late, they hate it!

OK, so here’s the truth!

All this makes you want to roll your eyes and say, “Big deal, your bath’s late, Don’t worry about it! You are an old lady anyway and your bath time is not the most important thing in the world! “Or “Shut up! You’ll get your ice cream, there’s plenty of it, this is the United States of America and there is no shortage of chocolate Ice cream! “Or “Get over it! We are taking a different route to your room? I looked it up on map quest and turning here will get you there just as fast!”

I admit it! Sometimes I DO say that! When I do, I get different reactions, Sometimes the reaction is a look of surprise and then a smile. Sometimes it's not.

Most the time,  I say what I know that I should say, which is “Bless your heart, pick your feet up and we will go the way you want to, the same way as we go every day, Your so right Darlin, it’s just terrible that your bath was an hour late, those bath people should be ashamed of themselves for making you wait and All right sweety, let’s get you some chocolate ice cream, you deserve your chocolate ice cream right now!”

Old people do have an end and it’s soon, there’s no reason to argue with them, if possible, it’s best to just go with the flow.

“Whatever you want mom, whatever it is, lets’ do it. I love you so much”