“Cleaning and scrubbing can wait ‘till tomorrow, for babies grow up, we’ve learned to our sorrow.  So quiet down cobwebs.  Dust, go to sleep.  I’m rocking my baby, and babies don’t keep.”

I have always loved that poem, especially when my little ones were little.  It was like some random poet was giving me permission to ignore the mess, at least until the dust bunnies threatened to carry us away in the middle of the night.  But one Sunday morning, that verse took on a whole new meaning.

We were singing the last song—for which we are all required to stand (I guess it gives us a head start on getting out of the building and finding lunch . . . and makes certain we are still awake)—and I was doing my usual survey of my surroundings when my eyes fell on her.  She was just a few feet away; we both occupy front row seats but in different sections.  As she stood with her visiting daughter to one side and her ailing husband seated on the other, I noticed she wasn’t singing.  She always sings.  Without fail.  It’s one of the reasons they changed locations in the auditorium.  They couldn’t see the screen very well and that’s where the words to the songs always appeared . . . as well as the Power Point for the sermon.  But you can listen to a sermon without visual aids;  it’s really hard to sing a song if you don’t know the words.  As I watched, her hand moved to her face, brushing away something just below her eyes, and I knew.  It’s also hard to sing when you’re crying.

When that final song ended and the final prayer was said, I made a bee-line for her pew, wrapped my arms around her, and asked if she was all right.  The floodgates briefly opened as she lamented the fact that her daughter had to help her clean her house.  She had never had anyone clean her house.  She had always done it herself.  But now she couldn’t.  Her husband’s declining health required most of her time and attention—and when she wasn’t focused on him she was simply too physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted to even think about cleaning.

We talked for a few minutes with me telling her it was her children’s time to step up and pay for their raisin’, to return the favor for all those long nights of worry and years of tender, loving care.  I also told her to milk it for all it was worth.  Maybe she could even get them to paint the house and mow the yard and plant a garden.  She laughed—which was my goal—and I moved away to allow other, equally observant congregants to speak with her.

But her words echoed in my mind; I knew her distress didn’t stem from an inability to clean her house or the steady rotation of children coming to help.  Her anguish grew from everything she had lost and the uncertainty of a very certain future.  The man upon whom her life had centered for sixty plus years was no longer the man she had married.  Slowly but surely he was becoming her fifth child, the victim of a disease that was stealing his memory and would eventually steal the life they had enjoyed together.  The day would come when she would have all the time in the world to clean and scrub and do pretty much anything else she wanted.  And she knew that.  She just didn’t know when.

How does one acknowledge grief when the tangible evidence of what you’ve lost is still very much alive?  It doesn’t seem logical to grieve the loss of someone who’s sitting right next to you.  But if anyone ever believed that grief made sense then I have some ocean front property in Arizona I’d like to sell them.  Loss is a master of disguise, appearing in so many different shapes and sizes that it is often unrecognizable when it arrives—and that arrival is often long before the advent of death itself.

So guess what?  There are more important things in life than clean houses—unless you encounter mutant dust bunnies.  There are times when the everyday routines must take a back seat to the more pressing demands of life . . . like caring for someone you love.  When those days come and you look around and see all that must be left undone, just remember . . .

Cleaning and scrubbing can wait ‘till tomorrow . . .

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