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.”
