Field Notes #38: The Happy Timers

Yesterday I ended up going out to lunch twice. I had planned to have lunch with Jeana, our music director, and her daughter Celeste at 1:00, but I also got invited to Wendy's at 11:00 with the Happy Timers, a group of older folks that gets together about once a month to go out to lunch. I figured I'd swing by Wendy's, maybe get a little snack, and still be hungry when Jeana arrived.

I had fun at Wendy's. I've been a little surprised at how much I've enjoyed getting to know the older folks at the church. I know that sounds bad, but it's more that this summer I've had my eyes opened to issues with the elderly that hadn't occurred to me before.

All my life there have been older men and women who have had a profound impact on me; the first person I think of is James Alexander, the late lay leader at Davidson United Methodist Church, where I spent 12 years from age 4 to age 16. James was truly a saint--since he shared his first name with my dad, we referred to them as "James the Elder" and "James the Younger," or, alternatively, James Alexander would become "James the Wiser." His passing was a significant loss for me, even though my family had since moved to Charlotte.

And of course, there are my maternal grandparents. Mimi and Pop, as we call them, have always been a huge part of my life; in fact, only in recent years am I realizing just how much their presence has shaped me. As the first grandchild (and the only one for a little over 2 years), I experienced their omnipresence in a way that my siblings and cousins simply didn't. Now that I am older, I have found in my grandmother a wise counselor and in my grandfather a source of ministry wisdom and really terrible jokes.

But my grandparents have always been active and youthful, always younger-looking and more independent than many of their peers. Only in the past few years have I noticed any sort of decline in their health, and that has been distressing. So when I came to Hill's Chapel, I had little to no experience with shut-ins and the chronically ill and elderly. Home visits were not something that would have occurred to me unless someone had just come home from the hospital, but I've been able to tag along with Val on visits to several folks who simply can't make it to church or much of anywhere anymore.

So, back to Wendy's. I've gotten to know some of the old men in the church through various things, including a monthly coffee break Val's been hosting, and I've really enjoyed that. They have stories and they are characters. In checking in with my lay training committee at the church, I was telling one of its members how I've been pleasantly surprised at the amount of interaction I've had with the older churchgoers, and he made a good point: older men are one of the most neglected groups in the church. Women continue to stay involved in the church as they get older, but many men are unable to keep doing so in the ways in which they were accustomed in their younger days.

I hadn't really thought about that. I borrowed a book from my boyfriend called Why Men Hate Going to Church--I haven't read it yet, but part of what Gary told me is in it is that men like to accomplish things, and when they aren't given the opportunity to do so, they get bored and disconnected. In that sense, it seems logical to me that as men slowly lose physical health and strength, they can drift away from the church; and it seems to me that widowers are even more likely to lose touch without a wife to keep them connected.

I'm grateful for the opportunities I've had to interact with the older and wiser members of this church. Some of these people were baptized at Hill's Chapel and have truly been here all their life. They are our link to the history of the church, and we cannot leave them out in this fast-paced modern society.