Mennonite Weekly Review

Here we were — my wife, Anna, and I — visiting my mom, Ann Dayton Bishop, at Rockhill Mennonite Community near Sellersville, Pa., over the Christmas-New Year holidays. It’s been her home for about nine years after vacating the humble abode on Old Easton Road that had been the Bishop homestead since 1962.

Anna and I sat in the dining room that serves her floor and, for the first time, I spoon-fed Mom her lunch. It wasn’t hard to do, but the food items were pureed to aid her difficulty in swallowing. Her food didn’t look all that appetizing, but she ate most portions.

It wasn’t too long ago, was it, that I sat in a wooden high chair that is still in the family, and Mom fed me strained comestibles, either from glass jars (Gerbers) or veggies compressed in a food strainer that hooked to the edge of the kitchen table.

I scanned the room during the meal, and it appeared to me like most of Mom’s fellow residents were in worse condition, physically or otherwise.

Most needed assistance with eating. One woman started crying loudly in the middle of her meal with no apparent provocation. Another kept falling asleep between bites.

Rockhill staff are on duty 24 hours a day and attend to occupants in ways that I know I couldn’t do day after day. I admire their commitment to their charges.

Mom is the same person, I thought to myself, but not the mother that I’ve known for so many years. Missing is the high energy level and the outgoing, sparkling personality, not to forgot the incredible culinary artistry and hospitality that were her trademarks. She has difficulty reading and spends large blocks of time watching the Nature Channel on TV, sitting and staring into space.

But she still looks after her physical appearance and to me still radiates an inner beauty despite her numerous physical ills. I’m grateful that I’m able to tell her, “I love you, Mom,” and she replies, “I love you too. You’re one of my four favorite sons.”

It’s not morbid, I believe, to say that Mom could be with us for a long time to come, or she could suddenly depart this life to join Dad, who died in 1998. Her mother, my Grandma Dayton, was in fairly decent health, but died peacefully in her sleep at age 84. Mom is 87.