IT'S WHAT WE DO

I used to volunteer at Hospice. I am an itinerant writer with an unpredictable, frequently changing itinerary. My boss, volunteer coordinator, used me with clients who wanted/needed help with writing projects. I let her know when I was available, when I was available and it worked. One day she called, “I wouldn’t call on you for this, it’s not how I want to use you but in this case you’re my last chance and I really want to support this family.” I asked what she needed and it was simply, someone to be there. A client was in her final hours and the family was coming in from all over the map. So I went to the nursing home, identified myself and was taken to a private room at the end of the hall. She was an old lady, sleeping peacefully. I sat down and began to read a magazine I had picked up in the lobby. 

In a while, six people came; one couple about right to be her children, the others more like adult grandchildren. We exchanged hello’s, who we were and they began the ritual of last goodbye’s to someone who couldn’t hear and wasn’t going to wake up. Occasionally, out of their own need, they drew me into the conversation. They thanked me for being there. I said, “It’s what we do.” The subject changed to Hospice; good for a few minutes and the tide turned again to the reason for being there. 

In the drawer of her side table they found several plain, soft cover books of the same title. The woman had self published a book that she believed, needed to be written, needed to be shared. She carried several with her everywhere she went, giving them to anyone who would take it. It was a memoir, anecdotes from her life that praised Jesus and glorified God. She believed that her wonderful life was made so only because of her faith and religion. A grandson I imagine, told me he had read it, recommended it as he handed it to me. Like the fly on the wall, it’s amazing what you come away with when you’re a spectator. I sensed his recommendation was more an act of respect for her than an endorsement of the book. But I accepted it. Soon, they started collecting their things. They asked how long I’d stay; I told them at least until the shift change, another hour. They thanked me again and left. I began thumbing, skimming through the righteous lady’s book. 

She had good command of language and wrote knowing exactly where she was taking it. Any part of it could have been lifted from a prize-winning sermon. Her witness was what every faithful ear longs to hear. I was reading with the same sense of respect that her grandson had shown. But I had moved on to another kind of religion where miracles and myth come from the same tap and God is a metaphor. Shift change came and I left the book on her side table. 

Several years before my time with Hospice I was sharing lunch with my dad in the dining room at his nursing home. At the time, none of us knew how fast his time was running out. He in his wheel chair, near blind, near deaf, knowing that he would never be better; he told me, “Ever-body arrives here vertical but they all go out horizontal.” He was telling me he knew he would die there but I wasn’t ready to hear that. I treated it with humor but he didn’t laugh. A man at the next table, someone we didn’t even know, he bowed his head before eating. I noticed Dad watching him, saw it coming; the clenched jaw and veins in his forehead. “God dammed heathens!” We hadn’t prayed over our food. It hadn’t occurred to either one of us that we should pray. It took a stranger to stir his religion again. When you strain good beer through a human the buzz lasts a while and goes away, and what you don’t soak up, you flush; that’s how my parents’ religion went through me but I couldn’t tell him I was a heathen too. 

Thumbing through the book, thinking about my dad; it occurred to me that my writing is little more than therapy. You have those moments when you believe that your experience and your opinion are worth the reading. The old lady thought her book would change lives. Not very many, maybe nobody at all, learn life lessons vicariously. As much as we would like to share, to chart a better course, you have to experience for yourself and make of it what you will. I’ve self published and those books are for the most part shelved away somewhere, unread. My photographs are much better than the writing and the eye prefers images to paragraphs. Time is precious and reading more than a few lines is a lot to ask. But I keep writing. Someday, when a curious descendant or random soul skips over the text in favor of the photos, it won’t be because it wasn’t written.