For many years— at least a couple of decades— my siblings and I worried a great deal about our aging parents. They lived in a problematic setting (cramped second floor of a two-family house that needed work) and stubbornly refused to listen to the advice and counsel of medical professionals. When a new physician shared her concerns with my father regarding his unsteadiness on his feet (one of the reasons for the visit was because of a fall), he declared that he was changing doctors. That happened multiple times with both parents.

In the fall of 2019, my mother broke her hip. My siblings and I wanted to use the opportunity to get both parents into a better living situation (especially since my father admitted, during a long hospital visit, that mother had started to show, through the previous year, serious memory issues). We knew it would be difficult. One of the people we turned to for assistance was the pastor at the church my parents attended. The relatively new pastor (and relatively new to ministry) declared that she was up to the task. She was confident that she could provide the necessary push to get them to deal more realistically with their situation. In my conversations with her, I warned her that she didn’t seem to appreciate fully what she was dealing with when it came to my parents. She assured me that she understood what was going on, what her role was, and how she would go about convincing my parents that it was time to move.

They didn’t move. Once my mother was discharged from a rehab center, she essentially became housebound until the early signs of dementia were accelerated by UTIs in the spring of 2022. After she had to go to a nursing home, we spent months and months trying to convince our dad that he needed to move. Eventually, he did (just a few months ago). It took a huge amount of work.

In the local church I serve, I’ve seen similar situations and I’ve talked to various people about issues around aging. Some deal with it in an honest, thoughtful way, keeping in mind their relationship with their family and the potential burdens they place on their adult children. Some are in the same sort of denial as my parents.

None of the people I’ve dealt with was or is the leader of the free world.

Since the presidential debate debacle of a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been thinking a lot of President Biden’s priest. I don’t know if Mr. Biden is in regular contact with a priest, but I’m assuming he is. I would not want to be that priest, in such a hugely challenging position to provide counsel to a man who clearly is not willing to consider the ravages of aging on his own self. I would not want to be that priest, in the delicate role of trying to help to save our democracy.

In the defiant tone of the President since that debate, I suspect Mr. Biden is endeavoring to show strength and stamina. All I see is a foolish and stubborn old man, refusing to accept reality. I know that I’m not alone. Lots of other Americans have had or are having similar experiences to my experience, in which an aging family member flat-out refuses to take a good look in the mirror or to admit to signs of decline— that almost everyone else can see.

I can’t help but wonder about the priest who may be invited in to spend time with the President— to advise, to counsel, to listen, to pray. I don’t doubt the sense of powerlessness that may very well be part of that priest’s current reality and experience. Whoever you are, priest/spiritual guide/trusted pastor, I hold you in prayer.