By Fr. Dominic Winter
The year 2016 was a big one for my family: my brother Evan became a priest, my sister Maureen graduated high school, and my sister Teresa got married. We joked that if we had a repeat in 2022, we’d have to add one more celebration: Mom’s funeral.
As it turns out, 2022 had my ordination, Andrew’s high school graduation, Maureen’s wedding… and my grandpa Dick’s funeral.
The jury’s still out on whether it was better to get it all over with in one year. In any case, it was a whirlwind of a year, and I don’t know how Mom and Aunt Sue did it all. I’ve always known they’re wonderful, but the trials of illness and old age in their dad made true love so clear, so radical, in our lives.
Grandpa’s condition had been debilitating over the years, of course. The patient, humorous, affectionate grandpa we always loved had been getting slower, more solemn, sadder. It was especially hard when he could no longer walk on his own. I remember taking a couple shifts at night, getting up three or four times to help him trudge to the bathroom and back without falling. Mom and Aunt Sue would take turns with the Visiting Angels to do this for weeks on end.
Grandpa’s humor flagged as well. He had a whole arsenal of classic jokes for the longest time. But gradually the one-liners dropped off: “I have diabetes, but I can drink all the water I want!” “I’m still vertical!” “I’m going to my sound-proof room.” All of them gave way to just “I’m still here.” Even that went away when he stopped speaking at all.
But we knew he still loved us, and we loved him. I was so privileged to visit him one last time in the fall of 2022, soon before his passing Dec. 9. Not only did I want to see him again before his passing, but especially as I was then a newly-ordained priest. For a man who no longer had savor in any of life’s attractions, even the presence of his great-grandchildren, I wanted to bring him the one thing that still mattered: the grace of Christ.
I don’t think I’ll ever have such a personal privilege again, except perhaps with my own parents: to celebrate Mass in his living room, to anoint him myself, to give him the opportunity to confess, to offer him the Holy Eucharist twice. I felt like the minister of Christ’s mercy in the darkest and most extreme of places: with a man who could neither walk, nor hardly eat, nor hardly speak. The Eucharist I gave by touching his inner lip with the Precious Blood on my little finger. He knew exactly what was going on, and I am sure it was one of the last things that ever mattered to him.
That’s what I remember when I think of Grandpa Dick’s passing. I think of his humor, his love, his generosity, the opportunity to have a home-away-from-home in Denver. But now, I think most of all of the hope amid the darkness of his death. Nothing in this life gave him pleasure or exhilaration. It was only the presence of family and the unshakeable power of Jesus that still could move his soul.
Pope Francis, clearly and often, tells us to love and care for the old, not to cast them off in their last years. Not only is this the final, greatest opportunity to treasure life with heroic love, as my mother and aunt showed me, but it is the clearest moment to see the “Light shining in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
