Undignified

 

Image by Max from Pixabay

Have you ever had one of those experiences where you said a thing without thinking much and then immediately regretted it? I assume that this is a normal human phenomena and not something limited to me, but I’ll willing to accept that I’m the odd one out here.

Before I share with you the dumb thing I said, I need to set some expectations. I’m going to talk about a sad thing, but this post is not about that sad thing. It’s about what I learned from being dumb during the sad thing. Got it? Cool. Let’s get started.

I learned a thing last year. There’s a trick you can do with T-shirts for people who are bedridden and can’t dress themselves. If you cut most of the back of the T-shirt off but leave the neck hem intact, you can drape the shirt over the person’s head and cover their shoulders and upper arms. The neck hem holds the shirt in place. At a glance, it looks like they’re wearing a shirt. This is nice for them because it helps keep their shoulders covered, and it’s nice for the caregiver because it makes changing clothes much easier.

To put it differently, it provides some measure of dignity to the wearer while easing the job of the caregiver.

I was in my parent’s house the day my dad died. I was sitting in the living room and listening to the mechanical pulse and whirr of his oxygen machine coming from his bedroom. He was completely bedridden at this point and unable to communicate. Mostly, he slept. The nurse stopped by for his checkup and asked for help rolling him over. I’m told bed sores are no fun. I volunteered.

We rolled him from his back to his side, and that’s when I learned the T-shirt trick. His blanket slumped off, and his modified T-shirt sagged to the side, dangling from his neck. There was my dad, naked and helpless on his bed. It struck me as undignified.

Gone was the big beard and bellowing voice. Gone were the strong hands and big arms. He was fading away. And it made me angry and sad and, as mentioned at the beginning of this post, stupid.

“We don’t get much dignity at the end, do we,” I said. Those might not have been the exact words, but they’re close enough.

The nurse looked at me aghast. She looked at me as if I had just insulted my dying dad. Which, in retrospect, was an appropriate reaction. But in the moment, it confused me. Surely this was not dignified. This was not how it was supposed to be.

I looked at my dad, my dad who could not communicate, and I saw a tear in his eye. And I was ashamed. In that place where he was dying, where he was being cared for so well by my mom and the nurse, I was the one who treated him poorly.

What did I expect? How did I expect him to die? Swinging a sword while fighting a dragon? Set ablaze on a funeral pyre by his warrior kin? What would a dignified end look like? What did it even mean to treat someone with dignity when he could not talk or dress himself?

What I wasn’t thinking about in that moment was what dignity really means. There are a lot a definitions, but my favorite is this:

    the quality or state of being worthy, honored, or esteemed

    from: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dignity

To have dignity is to be worthy. Here was a man at the end of his long service to his King. Here was a son of God, his body worn out, ready to start his next journey. My dad’s dignity wasn’t based on eloquence or posture or position or title. His dignity was based on his innate worth as a human, as someone made in the image of God. Dying cannot take that dignity away.

But I could treat him without dignity. I could treat him in an undignified manner. And that’s what I missed. My mom was treating my dad with dignity by letting him wear his favorite shirts when it became too hard to dress him. The nurse was treating him with dignity by keeping him comfortable in his last days. And I didn’t see it. I saw my dad helpless and weak. I saw him naked and broken. I couldn’t see past the pain to see him the way my mom saw him. To see him how God saw him.

I’m not proud of that moment. I’m sharing it now because I think I might not be the only person who sometimes fails to see past poverty and sickness and pain. I think I might not be the only person who fails to see the innate dignity that all humanity has because we’re made in God’s image. And yes, we get that image dirty. We age. We abuse our bodies. We act in ways that are unfitting for the sons and daughters of God that we can be.

But it’s there. Dignity. Worth. Value. It is a gift given to us by the King of kings.

It is my hope and prayer that you are smarter than me. That you don’t say stupid things to your dying father. That you can see the dignity in all humanity by seeing the shape and shadow of the Creator in them.