FALL 2003Mary Waddington
Salem MM
he corridor seems longer than usual because I’m in a hurry. I still have one more resident to see back in the Health Care Unit, so I lengthen my stride. I fork right at the nurse’s station and breeze by whatever lies in this corridor without really noticing. I reach her room only to find the door is closed. I knock, knowing she can’t open it. It is opened by an aide who tells me her preparations for the transfer from bed to wheelchair have only just begun, and this will take a while. The door closes and again becomes a part of the wall in front of me.
I stand there in limbo. My eyes trace the pattern in the carpet while my mind toys with the concept of waiting. In my preoccupation with hurry I barely hear the plaintive voice behind me. It gives forth sounds I can’t make sense of, sounds that vibrate like an insistent tapping on my shoulder. And I know they are directed at me. I turn and see her. She is parked in her wheelchair against the wall reaching for me, pulling against her restraint, clawing the air in an attempt to close the space between us. I drag a chair over and sit very close to her.
She assesses me with hungry, feral eyes. Her face is as untamed as these eyes, and it holds an expression as urgent as her voice. She again gives me a string of syllables I can not link together. And this time her voice tilts upward at the end, begging some sort of response. I am hearing her with more than just my ears, and so I say, “Tell me more.” And she does. She babbles less urgently now and presses her cold, brittle fingers into my hand. I cover them with mine to warm them, to quiet their restlessness, and we sit for a very still moment just looking at each other. Her eyes begin to soften. They are now like tiny wet puddles reflecting memory. She reaches out with her free hand and begins to stroke my arm. She does this gently, and I yield to it.
Now she is stroking the back of my neck. Now she is stroking my hair. These are well practiced movements. I can tell she has done them a thousand times. They are tender in their intention, like those that bathe babies, comfort hurts, cool fevers and brush away tears. They are motions triggered by a heart so laden with love that there is no guesswork. We are both opened wide by this primal communication that knows no caution. Our faces are close. Our features are soft. The corridor seems no longer there.
Suddenly my thoughts flicker back to the pastoral care orientation for volunteers, and I’m seeing its cumbersome manual of rules. I’m hearing in my head random and disjointed fragments of instruction: “Wash hands before ... rub them together 15 ... enter the room only after ... keep a distance of ... honor personal space by ... remember infection control ...” But now the manual becomes a blur in my mind, and the rules fall away and are lost.
Her cupped hand is on the back of my head, her cool, bony fingers tangled in my hair. She is pulling my head forward. I am seeing her face close up, so close there is nothing else in my vision. It is worn, deeply etched by a life time of effort, and yet so open that I am seeing her fully. Her eyes are filled with yesterday’s dreams. And her hand, in its tension, is surging with love. Then, with the swiftness and devotion of motherhood, she closes the gap between us. And her kiss falls with sweet purpose upon my upper lip. And this sweetness travels to the deepest part of the innocent child within me.
We sit above the patterned carpet, two small figures holding onto one another. Sifting into my mind is an awareness of why that plaintive voice called me to this space, into this healing place that is beyond hurry and deliberation. I was invited because I, the carefully trained visitor, needed to become the visited. And I, the giver of something nebulous called pastoral care, needed to be the receiver of a very tangible and sacred blessing.
In this corridor moment of language transcended, in this ageless, genderless, timeless state, the defining edges between us are gone. We have undressed from the cloaks that were sown by our culture, and we stand wonderfully naked and free.
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Last modified:
Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 08:19 AM
