Saturday 15 October 2011

Patient Love





Turning a corner as I drove home from some errands, I caught a passing glimpse of love. 

A middle-aged Asian couple were bent over a white woman in a wheel chair. The man faced the disabled woman and leaned forward to hold the front arm-rests of her chair. The woman was standing behind holding onto the chair’s handles. 
The very elderly woman sitting in the chair had her pale face turned toward the sky, whether by choice or painful necessity. The wisps of white hair still clinging to her balding head lifted in the breeze.  Her eyes were closed, her mouth agape. She looked to be at a dreadful stage of life, the one I’ve seen so often in senior’s homes, where once robust adults sit hunched in a lobby, many of them mutely at the mercy of someone else’s decision to wheel them back to bed.
During the instant this trio was in my view, I noticed that the woman behind the chair was bent low enough to speak into the white woman’s ear. I smiled, pleased that the caretaker respected the older woman enough to talk to her, even though she appeared to be mentally absent.

Was the caretaker hissing, “Oh, stop your noise. We’re almost there.”?
I don’t think so.
I think she was Mother God whispering, “You’re okay. We’ve got you.”