Journey of the Heart / Jennifer Burger

Siblings’ faith shines through in care and love for Mom and Dad

My father-in-law, Robert J. Burger, passed away on March 15. During his funeral Mass, Dad’s cousin, Father Mark Burger, spoke of him as a “soul tender.”

This is an apt description for someone who loved so completely and was a good steward of all the gifts that God had given him—especially the people in his life.

But the story I really want to share is about those who tended to his soul as well as to all his needs during his journey home to our Lord: his family. During the last eight months of Dad’s life, I witnessed the beautiful way that they tended to not only him but to each other.

When Dad’s health started to decline last summer, the family rallied into action. It was Mom and Dad’s wish that he be at home, so my husband and his five siblings took turns traveling to Cincinnati to stay at their house to help Mom take care of Dad, run errands, and make their home comfortable and functional for his increasing medical needs.

Each member of the family brought his or her gifts to the table, from medical expertise to coordination of caregivers, from availability of time for extended stays to planning family gatherings and celebrations so all could stay connected. In many ways, it was the “Burger family as normal;” however, there was an outward expression of love and unity that I always knew was there but had not ever witnessed so profoundly.

I found myself in awe and admiration of how well they all worked together. Regularly, the six children and most times Mom would get on the phone and discuss the “next steps.” I was not part of these conversations but could hear them. And if my husband Paul and I were in the car and he was driving, I would monitor the group text from “Bro’s and Sis’ ” for the latest updates.

They paid attention to every detail, pivoted as needed and moved forward with a sense of mission that was motivated by love—love for their father and their mother. They shared their lives and this particular journey with that same love for each other. Conversations toward the end of Dad’s life were more involved, but in patience they always came to an agreement. Every decision was made with Dad’s well-being and Mom’s wishes and their needs in mind. Through their own sadness, they walked together with hope, the hope of eternal life that Dad would soon enter.

The greatest witness was of the love that Mom and Dad shared—until the very end—a love rooted in our Catholic faith that enabled them to love so well. This legacy remains and has been entrusted to his family—a family of which I have been most blessed to be a part.

I’m sure that many of you have lived a similar story and there are others whose family stories and witness may be more of dysfunction than “loving well.”

We all belong however to a family of faith as adopted children of God, a God who loves us so well that he gave his only Son Jesus, who by his life, death and resurrection, teaches us to love well.

As “Bro’s and Sis’ ” in Christ, this is our calling. Like the first Christian community that we will soon be reading about in the Acts of the Apostles, we have been entrusted with the gift of faith, handed to us through generations and through which we journey together.

May we be outward signs of God’s love and care for each other, being of one heart and of one mind—and loving each other well.
 

(Jennifer Burger is program manager at Our Lady of Fatima Retreat House in Indianapolis and a member of St. Simon the Apostle Parish in Indianapolis. She is also a spiritual director.) †