I suppose I’m not as regular at posting on this blog as I’d like. When it comes to writing, I am only absolutely sure of one thing—and that is this: it is secondary to just about everything else. This is why I say “I write” rather than, “I’m a writer.” A lot of living and thinking, reading and note-taking seems to be the prerequisite for me. It is also a private matter, how I think and process. Many words will never see the light of day, for which you and I both are grateful. However, it doesn’t take much to conjure up a story of past events, and peculiarity is always a fascinating character trait. Also, I am due for a post. So here I go.
When I was in college, I regularly visited the nursing home to try and cheer up the residents. When I look back on it, I think how odd it must have looked, a young person of no relation popping in, peach pie and flowers in hand, to celebrate a birthday of a stranger. There were many, and I certainly didn’t count them strangers, but I can imagine what onlookers thought. Mr. P was crazy (I knew this certifiably as I had a work-study job filing paperwork at the local hospital’s neuropsychology department) but loved chocolate milkshakes, so I’d pick one up for him every Wednesday. Hattie was bald and toothless and giggly. Carrie, my special friend, was quiet and stoic. She was only sixty something and she hated living in the nursing home, one wall away from the locked Alzheimer’s ward. A gerbera daisy lived in a pot on her windowsill, the only thing she was able to nurture. It gave her great pleasure to talk to it as if it were a friend. She joked, “that flower loves my carbon dioxide, and Lord knows I make a lot of it.” She was firmly attached to an oxygen tank, and her hands were permanently curled up tight, the aftermath of a stroke. I would work on her fingers and she would smile and ask me all about school.
I always had a Bible in hand to read them a few verses, but only if they saw it and mentioned it, or if there ever fell an awkward silence. My go-to chapter was 1 John 3. “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other,” –a reminder to myself as much as anyone. I’m not going to lie, there were a lot of times I didn’t want to visit. There were quite a few residents at the nursing home that were hard to love, situations where I felt unwelcome, workers whom I felt sorry for, workers who were clearly annoyed with me (for not having a good reason to be there) and the overall weirdness of showing up unannounced. I pushed aside a lot of discomfort and self-doubt to show up. This is a common theme in life.
Most of us are trying to overcome wounds or shortcomings from our childhood. If we were raised to believe we’d never measure up, or if there was abuse or neglect, prejudice, certain things were unsafe, off-limits—it shaped us into a grownup that needs to overcome something in our life. It seems like there are people who genuinely want to make the world a better place, but most of us are just trying our best to crush some sort of resistance that lives deep in our soul. We recognize, in our core, a motivation to serve a higher purpose. To be kind. To find joy. This is how I know there is a God; not just in the glory of His creation, but by the anticipation and thrill of overcoming self. It always requires action–beautiful, yes, but it always begins with conquering fear, doubt, self-preservation.
The nursing home is where I broke in the greenhorn in me. It’swhere I practiced getting brave, marching into the unknown, understanding the value and frailty of life. Every single one of us longs to be loved, touched,wanted. I recognize it in my own human nature, but maybe I saw it first in the nursing home.
I take my kids there now. I have since they were little. We recruit other friends and bring crafts to pass out to the residents. We playinstruments and sing songs. We lean in and speak up, because old ears are hard of hearing.
Life, every part of it, deserves a front row seat.
You might have to kick your own self out of the way to get the best view. Do it anyway.
