THE WOMAN I CANNOT FORGET

She was a lovely, engaging looking woman of 62, though she appeared to be younger. Her hair was still dark brown, though now touched with gray, Her complexion was fair and clear, her features resolute and feminine.

We “met” at a place where new acquaintances are rarely made—in a Long Beach funeral home. She lay dead in a simple casket in a lonely room, unattended by either persons or flowers. But the mortician, my new friend T. C. Archibald, arranged an appropriate Christian funeral for her, and he had her looking nice, even if there was no one to come to see her. He and a minister, just the two of them, would lay her to rest with a simple graveside service.

A lawyer, who attended her estate, arranged for her burial, all by phone, and even he did not call to pay his respects. She left this world without any loved ones. Nobody, except a distant cousin in a distant city, who would not likely make it to the funeral.

A widow, apparently for a long time, she died in a rest home. As probably the only visitor to her bier, I was curious to know more about her, for I saw in the form she left behind signs of admirable womanhood. But it did not matter, for as she lay there she represented to me those countless lonely souls who have to live their latter years as “the forgotten ones” and to die alone. Archie told me that it was common in California for one to live and die apart from his loved ones. And there are many who do not care to be bothered with the sick, aged, and dying kin, even if they are nearby.

It was just one more case for poor Archie, who does his thing for the Lord as an undertaker that cares, but that dear lady lingers in my mind, forcing me to write about her—a rare set of circumstances that brings her into the columns of this journal! I am now in faraway Mexico City, somewhat alone myself in a city of 12 million, and I am still thinking of that casket in Long Beach, alone in a dark mortuary, or perhaps now interred in some, it matters-not-where, grave that will never be visited.

Maybe she was my sister in the Lord, alone in the world with no one to care. Maybe she died peacefully in hope of immortality. Maybe not. In any case she haunts my mind as reflective of the human predicament. Widowhood. Loneliness. Illness. Pre-mature death. Forsaken. Her name is Legion, for there are countless souls who must walk that way. And there are so few who care. As I stood beside her those few moments, the unlikely visitor that I was, it bothered me that she had to die alone, with no one to hold her hand, no one to pray for her, and no one to bear her to her grave except professionals. It seemed grossly wrong in a community where there are tens of thousands of Christians who make up what is suppose to be God’s sensitive community.

Our Lord’s concern reached out to the poor and the deprived, to the rejected and the lonely, to the sick and the dying. His church as his Body, if it truly be “the fulness of him who fills all in all,” must also reach out to those who hunger for fulfillment, including those that Thoreau describes as living in “quiet desperation.”

Those in rest homes, retirement complexes, and nursing centers (not to mention the countless shut-ins in private residences) are a vast new mission field emerging in our culture. In another decade or so our aged will account for upward of one-fourth of our population, and many of these will be among the forgotten ones.

That is our challenge: to see to it that no one really be forgotten in a nation of millions of Christians. Once we see the church, not as a preserver of orthodoxy or a people of doctrinal purity, but as a ministering community for Jesus’ sake, we will move more in this direction.

The aged are often a bother. They may not hear or see well, and they are sometimes self-centered. Others may make better company. But that is where agape love comes in. Like Jesus, we are here to serve, not to be served. Ouida and I have been visiting folk in the several rest homes in our city, and we are impressed with their great need for tender loving care. They need to be listened to lovingly, and they are encouraged by the gospel message of hope.

Ouida has remarked several times, after being with these forgotten ones, “Oh, I don’t want to get old!” A natural reaction, and if we allow our “natural man” to rule our hearts, we’ll be saying, “I don’t want to be around people like that.” But if we love like Jesus loves, which is the Spirit’s fruit in our hearts, then we’ll see youth and beauty in all that lives.

I don’t dread seeing my Ouida grow old, for that too is part of God’s plan for us all. She’ll be rich in God’s love and beauty at whatever age. But the thought of her having to die alone, unloved and unwanted by anyone, and finally to be laid to rest by strangers, grieves my heart. Surely the Lord is always with us, and that is the great consolation in all suffering, but he also ministers through his community. Acts 8:2 is a touching verse: “Devout men buried Stephen, and made great lamentation over him.”

When my loved ones lie ill, I want someone to be there who cares. When they grow old and useless, I want someone to grieve when they leave this world. Surely God wants this for everyone.

The hundreds of churches in California (and everywhere) should enroll every rest home in the state as an important part of their mission. An organized effort should be made to see to it that the aged and the lonely are not wholly neglected. Certain patients could be assigned to families in the church who could visit such ones regularly, check on them by phone, send them cards, read to them, write letters for them, have them into their homes, and generally “adopt” them as among their loved ones. And see to it that they do not suffer and die alone.

It is a matter of human dignity. The woman I cannot forget was a person, created in God’s image, with the right to love and be loved. The church is remiss in its mission when it does not move in beside the lonely and the forgotten and hold their hand and say, “We love you.” It is an indignity, upon ourselves as well as them, to do otherwise. Something is wrong when people suffer and die alone in the very shadow of our buildings.—the Editor