NAOMA, MOM AND APPLE PIE

My wife Naoma and I celebrated our fiftieth wedding anniversary about eighteen months ago – January 21, 2000.

It was a wonderful day and we appreciate the warm friendship and love expressed by a host of friends, family and relatives who shared this celebration. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

The celebration was held in the Nursing Home due to the fact that Naoma was unfortunate enough to have gotten into harms way and developed a regressive disease know as Alzheimers. We have been battling this cruel and insidious disease for almost 12 long years. At the time of our fiftieth anniversary Naoma was well beyond the capability of responding to her family members, a friend or a relative regarding their mutual relationship they have shared over the years.

Looking back, our fiftieth anniversary was definitely a milestone, a turning point in our lives. It was as if everyone had expressed their last good byes at that time. Friends, family and relatives seemed to call or visit less and less and Naoma and I seemed to drift into a lonely but special quietness that somehow became our own. In these final waning years, circumstances beyond our control have again altered our lives. Our Christian faith not only sustained us during the past 18 months it has blessed us beyond belief.

One day Naoma had let her favorite companion, a yellow Pooh Bear, fall to the floor behind the bed. When I moved the bed forward from the wall I leaned over Naoma to return Pooh Bear I kissed her on the forehead. Naoma simply scooted over, patted the bed beside herself plainly indicating she wanted me to lye down beside her. When I laid down she immediately turned over toward me and planted the most tender of kisses on a surprised husband. This kiss was not sexual it was spiritual. She was telling me in the only way she could that she still loved me. It was then that I really knew that love is eternal and that Naoma and I would forevermore enjoy a spiritual communications. Love truly conquers all!

During the first two years of Naoma’s residency at the Nursing Home we have spent a considerable amount of time visiting other patients, especially the ones that their families, friends and relatives had forgotten about or seldom visited. Naoma still loves to visit these relatively new friends that have now, over these past few years, became old friends. Without saying one word Naoma has become a model witness for her own unique Christian faith. Her beautiful bright blue eyes and her smiling face seems to reflect a spiritual nature that these aged wise people seems to understand. We still make these visits since Naoma told a surprised husband that she still loved him, however we take time to express our ourselves in the quietness of our own unique and rekindled love while we marvel at God’s beauty of a rose or a tree in the gardens just outside the windows.

The past few years have been one of the most enlightened periods of my life. The time spent with my wife and her many newfound friends has enabled me to listen to, respect and dearly love the elderly who are now caught up into a natural process of aging. It didn’t take me long to accept their age, their infirmities and illnesses realistically and to consider them to be the most fortunate people that I have ever had the opportunity to be associated with. They are receiving the best of care in a tender, kind and loving way.

They are, most of them, extremely wise and loving people of the Christian faith. They have fought the good fight and though they are impaired by illness and like most every living person down through the ages they consider these impairments as temporary. The wisdom of their faith guarantees they are set for all eternity. My prayers are simple and reflect their wishes that His will be done and that He remains with them and comforts them as they make the transition. This is what they want; this is what they deserve.

A limited medical profession, mainly those in the field of psychiatric and psychological medicine tells us that Naoma’s disease has already taken her beyond reason and understanding. Yet Naoma and I have been able to use our Christian faith to continue a spiritual communication far beyond their understanding and comprehension.

Naoma is a wonderful mother; she is definitely a candidate for Mother’s Hall of Fame. Just ask our three wonderful sons. Actually she is the personification of mom and apple pie but she is much more than that. As her husband and her primary caretaker I am the only person in this old world that really knows the extent of her battle as she was forced to relinquish her memory, her mind and her physical well being. She is dying the slowest of deaths yet she somehow finds the way to express her spirit through Gods love. What a wonderful wife and person she has become!

Very few people who have ever lived have suffered more than Naoma and these moments as she gradually slips into oblivion she is sustained by a spirit of Christian faith and truth that goes beyond belief and becomes a state of absolution for all eternity. Knowing this we are able to go far beyond the anger, the stress, the worry and the fear that have plagued so many people suffering with similar circumstances.

Naoma and I look forward to our daily trysts as we reminisce the past and anticipate a glorious future.

Like the day we got married. Immediately after we became engaged I had accepted a transfer by my employer from Atlanta GA to Goldsboro, NC. I met Naoma’s train in Raleigh and we took a Trailway bus back to Goldsboro about 5:00 AM. Many doubts were going through my mind and I was just before changing my mind when she leaned over and kissed me and told me, "don’t worry, everything will be all right;" as if she could read my mind. We got married that afternoon and neither one of us had slept for over 36 hours.

When our first son Barry was born I was a complete wreck. Naoma assured me that "everything will be all right." She was just as positive when I was sure I would have to deliver Mitch in the car. She was right, we made it to the hospital just in time. Again when the doctor told me that I may have to make a choice between my wife or my son when Jeff was born, She again reassured me "that everything would be all right." I was then past doubting her.

My three sons, as they were growing up, knew exactly where their mother stood on ethics, morals and the discipline required of her Christian faith. She expected, and to a certain degree demanded, her children to have the discipline to do the right and moral thing in any given situation. That way "everything would be all right." Time has proven she was right again. When I tell her that every one of our eight grandchildren are honor roll students and they all attend church regularly she smiles with a trusting, knowing and satisfied look.

During the fifty odd years of our marriage the hardest thing by far that Naoma had to do was a disagreement forced upon he by her own father. Her father was an opinionated preacher and thought that all women should never wear shorts or slacks. Naoma dearly loved her father and visited him regularly. Without thinking one day, she visited him wearing a pair of slacks. Her father literally preached her a sermon. He told her she was not a Christian because of the way she dressed and many other things, his usual tirade of do’s and don’ts he was accustomed to passing judgments on. That was all that Naoma needed, was someone to question her Christian faith. With tears in her eyes she defied her father saying, "Who are you to tell me that I am not a Christian. You are not the one judging me and I will not take that from you anymore." Naoma’s response to our son Mitchell’s displeasure with his grandfather was "everything will be all right." Again, she was right and her father apologized to her about three years later.

When I visited Naoma in the hospital after her heart attack wondering if I could possibly do without her, she calmly advised me "that everything would be all right." This amazing woman’s heart actually healed itself by growing new veins to give her and her damaged heart the ability to sustain a somewhat normal life style for almost twenty years.

Naoma was there when her brother, suffering from Alzeimers and still searching for God’s plan for salvation reached out to his sister and said, "I want whatever you have."

Naoma told him, "It is so simple LB, you only have to believe in Jesus Christ and everything will be all right!" I have never seen such joy on anyone’s face when he replied, "You are right, it is that simple."

Recently I made quite an extensive and lengthy trip and was unable to visit Naoma each morning and afternoon as I usually do. I was away for almost a month. When I returned Naoma held onto to me for three of four days and was reluctant to let me leave after each visitation. Some time later, the night nurses told me that I should never leave her that long again; that she had cried every night I was gone and it only stopped on my return. Alzheimers patients seldom, if ever, weep!

Marriage is definitely a bed of roses; thorns and all, along with most of mans sins and misconceptions. Some say that only God can make a tree. I say that only a good woman can make a marriage. What would I have done without Naoma?

Naoma and I done something right in our marriage, we did remain true to our Christian faith; however I strayed more than I care to admit but I have finally got it through my head what Naoma keeps telling me, "Everything will be all right."

After all, we are content!

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. (Matthew 7: 7-8)