Thoughts on My Former Pastor

 
The Background
 
Not sure if I wrote anything about this before, but it's been on my mind this weekend, so here goes...
 
In November 2011, our pastor retired from our church. He was there for about 40 years. He had made the announcement in August & finally left in mid-November, giving him & his wife time to make the transition, pack, etc. Prior to this, there had been many changes happening in the church: how the worship service went particularly, and getting an "Associate Interim Pastor" (who our pastor had known for many, many years).
 
In the process of getting the AIP, plans were made to start looking for a new permanent pastor to enable the current pastor to retire (which he had been making noises about for some time). Something went wrong in the process & the pastor took it to mean that the committee was "trying to get rid of him." Basically, the original plan was dropped quickly & supposedly everything was smoothed over, or so it seemed to me. (I am just looking at the surface of everything.)
 
Then pastor announced his desire to retire, which actually came as a shock to us, considering his vehement insistence that he was not ready for retirement. He & his wife found a new place to live about 6-8 hours away, kind of close to one of their sons & near her favorite sister. About a month before the move, she was feeling very poorly. Her health has always been kind of tentative; in addition, he has a bad heart condition. She started to bounce back a little bit for their good-bye service (which was standing-room only, as one can imagine).
 
When they moved, pastor fell into a deep depression. He would not unpack or do anything; his wife was helped by her sister & brother-in-law. Then that January, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer (I suspect that the cancer was there prior to retirement when she was sick). She fought it with everything she had & even was quite mobile up to the week of her death that July.
 
When my friends went to the funeral, the pastor seemed like a shell of the person he used to be. My friend said that his wife would do everything for him--not just the cooking & cleaning, but also things like laying out his clothes for him, etc. And now he had to do everything for himself--quite a jump from "shutting down" after they moved.
 
He had returned for a memorial service for her up at our church that September. He seemed frail & thin (he'd always been quite robust), but he said that he was starting to bounce back emotionally; it would just take some time of course.
 
From then on, he started having to go to the hospital for various ailments, some of which involved his heart. Finally, he had to go to an assisted living facility & he is there now. As far as I know, he still has his place, but I'm thinking it may need to be closed up eventually if things don't change.
 
One of our couples at church was vacationing down that way last week & had wanted to take him out to dinner. His son wasn't sure it was a good idea, but did come around to the idea of visiting with him, but they were to "play it by ear" regarding the visit. From what she told me, he was much worse. He is on oxygen and seemed minimally responsive to them, though he seemed to have his faculties. To me, it sounded like he was much worse off than when we last saw him.
 
My Initial Thoughts
 
My feelings have been swirling around about this since Sunday. But before I can sort them all out, there are some initial thoughts I have:
 
- Pastor is not God (which I know of course) nor is he or should he be super-human, even if he is a pastor.
 
- our spiritual position is not dependent on how our leaders are (or on anyone else for that matter); we stand alone on our spiritual feet, if you will (or as I like to say, "everyone pulls up his own pants").
 
- within the space of 8 months, they went through 3-4 traumatic life-changing events; this would be an emotional assault on anyone.
 
- although I feel that his wife did him no favors by doing everything for him, I have nothing at all against her. This was partly their generation & partly the Christian culture of their generation (& even now, I think). She was a very good woman who I looked up to.
 
The Questions
 
When things like this happen, certain questions come up, and I suppose it's not unlike Job & his friends.
 
Like, why did this beat our pastor down, when he has God on his side?
 
And does this say anything about his teaching? Can I rely on it? (I think I partly answered this one in my initial thoughts.)
 
Does part of his depression involve my own questions above? Does he feel any shame over being depressed & does that influence his ability to get better?
 
And lastly, what does this all mean?
 
Meanwhile, I'm sad, concerned, a little confused. I've been meaning to write to him, but have been putting it off a bit, not sure what to write; not sure what might be encouraging vs. discouraging.