By the time Jesus arrives, Lazarus had been dead four days. The faithful sisters sent for Jesus but Jesus was delayed in coming them. Lazarus, the younger brother of Mary and Martha was sick unto death. Our lesson carries us back to Bethany, where Jesus friends find themselves in great distress. The truth is that many pastors and leaders today are starving for that kind of friendship. In Bethany, they were no Pharisee trying to catch him in his words, no one came for healing and no one was trying to get anything from him. He could sit anywhere, relax and be at ease. It was a place where he could be himself. It is the place where few of his conversations are recorded. Bethany was the place where Jesus found some real friends, friends with whom he could let down his hair. This village may justifiably be called the Judean home of Jesus, as He appears to have preferred to lodge there rather than in Jerusalem itself. Bethany is the place where "Simon the leper" lived and the home of three of Jesus closest friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus. It is the place where Jesus found a safe refuge. I cannot compete with guys like Padraig who have my admiration but I hope I have done my best.Introduction: Bethany is a small village, about 2 miles from Jerusalem.
Take four hours out of your day and the rest gets a bit compressed so just putting them in a CH does not shift the burden that much but certainly a bit easier on the carer than having them at home full time. I spend about 4 hours a day at the home give her her supper and and get her ready for bed but not in bed,clean teeth etc. For me the key point was that had I had either of my children living near me I may well have had her home but with one in the US and the other is some hundreds of miles up north I took the pragmatic view that I simply could not cope.Ĭontrary to many of the letters on this thread my wife has physically improved in the CH (which has nursing provision), but you have to keep on top of the care home management who, given the choice would like to keep them in bed as much as possible for safety reasons. It has worked for me but at some cost in emotional guilt for so doing. Speaking as someone who took the decision to use a CH for my wife who had borderline early onset vascular dementia and is now in the latter stagesof it. There have been many threads on the same subject but the key point seems to be whether you can trust the CH to really work with you. Sorry for such a long rambling post what do I know anyway in my 80th year? We all have regrets mainly through lack of knowledge. Right now I'm doing my own thing having started running after major surgery. Add to that I'm single minded once I chose a path to go down. I was also lucky to have been well above average fit for a man in his 70's.
Then most carers are women who have family commitments, work plus live too far away.
If it is a husband or wife one or other is not physically fit enough to care on their own. I'm only too aware that it is not possible for most people to care in their own home. Once all my concerns were concentrated on her well being, anything was possible. Ignoring all advice that led to her being put in a NH I took her home to care for her alone till her death almost five years later. To see her waste away I knew the answer before I asked her: "Have you given up?" She nodded in response (she could no longer speak.) That was the signal to sell up the home I spent a life time dreaming of, and move to a town house, which I made fit for purpose. During her stay in the NH I came to realize that I'd been thinking of how I was affected. Like most carers I was stressed, confused and incapable of understanding what caring for someone who was wheelchair bound, incapable of feeding themselves and had been doubly incontinent for years. As someone who placed their wife in a NH I'm in no doubt that it hastened the disease.