A Gentle Fade
On Dignity, Diagnosis, and the Kind Voice of Grace
“Even to your old age I am he,
And to gray hairs, I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear;
I will carry and will save”
(Isaiah 46:4 ESV)
A simple doctor’s visit. A clipboard form. A few cognitive questions. And a visit to the doctor’s office becomes an existential crisis. And, at length, another reminder of God’s strength made known in our weaknesses:
“Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10 NKJV).
I search for the right words. Sometimes for any word. I stumble. My head hurts.
The nurse makes a note in the chart. She places the clipboard on the movable tray before me. I glance down, wishing I hadn’t. I saw her notes on the clipboard:
“…to the degree he can be trusted given the most recent diagnosis…”
I do not speak—though my soul shouts.
“You can trust me! I’m not gone, yet!
I realize that she is only doing her job.
“You okay, Honey?”
“Yessum.”
But I’m not. My agitated spirit wants to correct, admonish, and complain, and it struggles against Christian ethics and societal norms to “hush.” But I want to tell her, “Hey! You shouldn’t write such things!” But scripture counters with a call to rest.
“What should I do? I search for reasons to trust myself. I default to my resume. In my mind, I begin listing my achievements to self-justify and confirm that I am not as scatterbrained as I thought I was. So, my defenses against the symptoms of this disease are—what?—my CV? I remember the story from the Bible, “Jesus and Paul we know. Your CV we don’t know” (from Acts 19:15). Right. I bargain with the bad angel perched on my shoulder: “But how about the 4-H first place in Cattle Showing?” Uh-huh. “The MVP in football?” Nice one. But, no. “But how about...?” The snobby celestial emissary interrupts my thought, “Don’t tell me you’re going to start naming credentials from your curriculum vitae. What a joke! The only thing that works is reprisal! Just tell the woman ‘You have no right!’”
Then, a still, small voice:
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant” (1 Corinthians 13:4).
All of the things I have done well cannot slow or stop the encroaching shadows. Nothing can short of a miracle. But why must I respond at all?
Then I pause.
Out of breath.
Unmasked.
Vulnerable.
And the nurse smiles.
She is perhaps a few years younger than I am. Her voice is soft, smooth, and shaped by the lazy blue hills and trickles of bottle-green streams of North Carolina. She wears a pro-life pin on her lacy lapel, Tar Heel earrings, and mercy in her tone.
“Well, honey,” she says, lifting the cuff, “Let’s get your numbers.”
I feel the blood pressure cuff tighten.
I preclude any irregularities: “Ma’am, I have to take medicine to raise my blood pressure, I have this other problem, so—”
“I know, baby.”
Of course, she knows. She has the chart with all my medications and symptoms, along with each diagnosis, including the one that prompts her to write about whether I am of sound mind at any given moment.
She multitasks like the headmistress of the neuro ward—checking oxygen levels, reading charts, aiming an electronic thermometer at my head, and taking my blood pressure. And if that is not enough to prove her talents, she yells out to an invisible coworker’s question, “No, just a regular Chick-fil-A. Thanks, Hon.”
Looking back at me, she smiles, “Sorry ‘bout that!” She meant the loud voice.
“Oh, no problem. You gotta eat!”
Now she cracks a self-deprecating joke about her weight as she fiddles with this machine and retakes my blood pressure.
It is a magnificent Grand jeté. I am at once her adoring audience and the inanimate prop, a plain wooden chair situated on the stage, an object to enhance her performance.
She calls me “Sweetie Pie” and “Baby.” I have noticed this change in the way women address me.
Perhaps because I am no longer perceived as a threat. A normal man presents a healthy threat. A woman thinks unconsciously, “The turn of a feminine ankle and I could send this suburban accountant back into his innate beastly nature!” The caveman ever looms! It is an ordinary thought that women carry without ever speaking about it. Of course, Christianity and Western norms borne of Judeo-Christian truths transform the beast and re-route the intuitive urges, domesticating him. Dennis Praeger once said, “The domestication of the human male is the beginning of civilization.“
“Tame him, but not too much,” one older lady tells a younger woman at a salon. “You will need some of that untamed animal to keep you and the kids safe. And to open the mayonnaise lid!”
[I think I drifted to sleep or fell victim to super low blood pressure.]
“Honey? You with me?”
The nurse.
Back to the observable dimension.
“Yessum?”
“You are a daydreamer, aren’t you?” She smiles. “Okay, we are now going to . . .”
The nurse’s voice drifts away. Her image before me pixelates, breaks apart, and drifts into the stratosphere of consciousness like water droplets in zero gravity.
I can’t get over her clinical observation that I just read. I wondered if anything like this had happened, so I reviewed her notes in the MyChart files from the visit. There it is. My emotions translate the simple words into my own: “He’s a nice enough bloke, but he is losing it a bit. Don’t take the poor fellow at his word.” Then, a better angel whispers, “No, Mike. She is saying, ‘Be alert to his condition so that we can better care for him.’”
Perhaps because she sees what even I struggle to see: a man not undone, but quietly carried.
The chart stings again:
“Must not take his words as certainty given the diagnosis.”
But her gentleness tells another story.
And I realize: the disease has a new face.
Not just something I carry, but something others carry with me.
It’s felt not only in the failing memory,
but in the eyes of those who see,
and the hands of those who serve.
So I must walk gently,
honestly,
empathetically—
not just for myself,
but for her.
For them.
For the image of God in every caring hand.
I once carried others.
Now, I am being carried.
It is not a hard fall, but a gentle fade. Though Neil Young sang, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away,” I have no control over following the famous folkster’s ethical framework (a dubious duty anyway). A more famous and unassailable truth replaces the whining Canadian folk song in my head: I remember, and I draw a long, slow breath to read:
“My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever”
(Psalm 73:26)
Song Reflection
Pair this reading with a song I composed and recorded: “Little Child.”
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Prayer for the Fading
O Lord, our strength and our song, our rock and our salvation— In the slow unraveling of memory, in the frailty that humbles pride, meet us with the kindness of a nurse’s gentle touch, a stranger’s respectful glance, a child’s unexpected smile. And help us to see You in such moments. When words fail, be our Word. When memory fades, remember us. And help us to trust You on such days. Carry us, Lord, even to gray hairs, even through trembling hands, until faith gives way to sight, and we can know even as we are known. For Thou, O Lord, art the fixed anchor in the raging seas, the Bright Morning Star amidst this gentle fade. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:3, 4).
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