The Five Silent Years

“and even to old age I am he, and even to hoar hairs will I carry you; I have made, and I will bear; yea, I will carry, and will deliver.”

— Isaiah 46:4, ASV

A Home at Last

For most of the three decades after the war Corrie ten Boom had no settled home. She lived out of suitcases, stayed with friends, and moved from one invitation to the next. She was accompanied on her travels by a series of younger women who acted as companions and secretaries. In her eighties the travelling finally became too much. In 1977, according to the museum, she settled permanently in the United States, in a house in Placentia, in Orange County, California.

She was eighty-five. She hoped to go on working from there, and for about a year she did.

Strokes

On 23 August 1978 Corrie suffered a stroke that took away most of her power of speech. More strokes followed. After a severe one in October 1980 she was confined to bed and could no longer walk. For the last five years of her life, the woman who had spoken to audiences in more than sixty countries could say almost nothing.

She was cared for through those years by two women in particular. Pamela Rosewell, an Englishwoman who had been Corrie’s travelling companion, stayed on to nurse her, together with Lotte Reimeringer. Pamela Rosewell, later Pamela Rosewell Moore, afterwards wrote a book about this period called The Five Silent Years of Corrie ten Boom. Anyone who wants to know about Corrie’s last years should read it. It tells of a woman who could no longer preach, but who still communicated with her eyes, her hands, and a few sounds. She still welcomed visitors, still prayed, and still, in some way her carers found hard to describe, ministered to those around her.

Her Mother’s Silence

It is hard not to notice the echo. Sixty years earlier, Corrie had watched her own mother decline through a series of strokes until she could say only a few words. Corrie remembered all her life how her mother’s love had gone on expressing itself through the little she could still do. Now Corrie herself lay in a room, nearly silent, depending on others for everything, and loving them through the little she could still do.

There is something fitting about it, though it cannot have felt fitting to her. The woman whose life had been defined by what she said, her testimony, her stories, and her preaching, spent her last years unable to say it. Her witness in those years was simply her presence, and the patience with which she accepted what she could not change. She had learned in solitary confinement at Scheveningen that God could be very near in silence and helplessness. She learned it again in Placentia.

“Even to Old Age”

The verse at the head of this chapter is one of the tenderest promises in the prophets. Isaiah contrasts the idols of Babylon, which have to be carried by their worshippers on the backs of weary animals, with the living God, who carries his people. “Hearken unto me, O house of Jacob … that have been borne by me from their birth, that have been carried from the womb; and even to old age I am he, and even to hoar hairs will I carry you” (Isaiah 46:3-4, ASV).

Corrie’s life had begun, by family tradition, with a premature birth so frail that no one expected her to live. It ended in the helplessness of old age. At both ends she was carried. In between, she had carried a great deal: refugees, ration cards, the burden of the underground, her dying sister, and the message she had been given in Ravensbrück. At the end, she was carried again. God, as Isaiah says, had made her, and he would bear her, carry her, and deliver her.

15 April 1983

Corrie ten Boom died at home in Placentia late in the evening of 15 April 1983. It was her ninety-first birthday. A memorial service was held a week later, and she was buried at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana, California, far from the family graves in Haarlem and Loenen.

Some who loved her pointed out that in Jewish tradition, to die on one’s birthday is sometimes regarded as a mark of a righteous life completed. It is the kind of pious gloss that gathers around the deaths of beloved people. Corrie herself would probably have smiled at it, and then pointed away from herself. She had long ago told her fellow prisoners that for those who belong to the Saviour, death is not a pit into which they fall but a tunnel into the light. She had watched her father go through that tunnel, and her sister. Now it was her turn.

For Reflection

Many of us fear the kind of ending Corrie had: years of helplessness and silence, dependent on others for everything. Her life does not make that ending less hard. But it suggests that such years need not be empty. They can be a continuation of the same faith, in a different key: a witness of patience instead of preaching, of receiving instead of giving.

“Even to old age I am he, and even to hoar hairs will I carry you.” The God who carried Corrie through Ravensbrück carried her through her last five silent years too. He does not stop carrying his people when they can no longer work for him.