Ineffectual in the Face of Grief

I was there on an awful morning and watched as young parents were given heartbreaking news.  I was there and so ineffectual.  I blamed it on my youth, but I wonder if I would be any more helpful now.  What does anyone do or say faced with overwhelming despair?

In the spring of 1965, I spent three months at Children’s Memorial Hospital on Chicago’s north side.  The hospital, which was a very large complex occupying a triangular block, apparently closed in 2012.  It is hard to imagine a site where so much of significance happened in so many lives, as going out of existence.

I was in my senior year of nursing school, and this three-month stint was my pediatric nursing education.  We attended classes, but we also worked in the hospital nearly every day.  We had a variety of experiences as we worked days, evenings and nights.  There was even one toddler unit where a student was in charge on the night shift.  But, something we were not supposed to do was work in the Intensive Care Unit.  The truth, however, was that when the ICU was short-staffed, they sometimes called one of the other units and requested that a student be sent up to help.  This had to be a student perceived as being able to cope with what went on in the ICU.  The student would not be assigned to the patients requiring the most technical care…I only saw the babies who had had open heart surgery through the plate glass windows of their room.  But, I was pulled to the ICU three times. I know I was viewed as a cracker-jack, but it was easy to get in over one’s head there.

On the day of this particular agony, I was assigned to a toddler girl who was in continuous convulsions.  She lived with her parents in a Chicago tenement which was sufficiently deteriorated to afford her a supply of plaster and paint chips to eat.  The lead content of these materials had caused immense neurological damage.  Her physical care was keeping me very occupied.  I don’t remember the details now other than the jerking motions racking her poor little body with no let-up, in spite of medications and a cooling mattress.

A young doctor, a resident, I suppose, came in to talk with the parents.  He did not sit them down and approach his topic gently.  While standing in a crowded space between the bed and the window, he unceremoniously delivered the information that their child would either die or be a vegetable.  There was no possibility of recovery.

The young couple sobbed and clung to each other. 

I was in up to my eyeballs with the physical care of the child, but I wonder now, if I was using that as an excuse.  I had no idea what to say or how to say it.  I was barely twenty years old myself.  How was I to cope when confronted with this raw wound torn in their souls?

I don’t remember what happened afterward.  I think the parents left….probably to seek the comfort and consolation of support from the wider family.  The child and I both survived the eight hour shift.

I have thought of this many times over the years.  Especially, when I owned an apartment rented to a young couple with a toddler.  Unknown to me was the fact that the child had an elevated blood lead level when they moved in.  It dropped during the first six months they lived in my apartment which was lovely and had no chipped paint or loose plaster.  I found out when it sky-rocketed during the second six months.  It was reported, and a state inspector came in.  Even though the level had initially dropped and the inspector could find no deterioration of concern, the assumption was that my apartment was somehow at fault.  Before I could legally rent the apartment again, I was made to do thousands of dollars of work which was basically unnecessary.  When I protested, I was lectured on the horrors of lead poisoning.

Believe me, I was much clearer on the horrors of lead poisoning than the state inspector was.  She had never cared for a child convulsing.  She had never felt helpless in the presence of overwhelming grief.

Get Out There and Push

This morning I had to take Bill to the Jacksonville airport.  He is headed for Colorado for some meetings and some skiing.  On the way back to Amelia Island, I was traveling in steady traffic on A1A, and I came upon an interesting sight.

An elderly man in a white shirt and dress pants was pushing an antique car.  I am not an expert on classic cars and have no idea what it was, but it was definitely pre-1940s, and had been beautifully restored.  However, something was obviously wrong with the mechanical components, and the car had apparently ceased to function on the busy road.  A woman, probably the man’s wife, was in the driver’s seat steering, and the senior citizen, dressed as though he was on his way to church, was pushing the car to try to get it on the side street.

The light at the intersection was red, so I had to stop, and this gave me the opportunity to watch the situation evolve.  Along came a pick-up truck.  The occupants quickly sized up the situation, pulled over and put the hazard lights on.  Two young men jumped out and literally ran toward the crippled vehicle.  Both men were tall and well-built.  Either they do manual labor or they spend time in the gym.  They quickly began to help push the old car.

They had no sooner arrived on the scene, when a sheriff’s car turned off A1A and pulled up behind them.  The officer put on his flashing lights and traveled slowly behind them, warning approaching vehicles and providing them with protection.

A young boy got out of the passenger side of the pick-up truck and watched the two men helping the disabled car.  I supposed him to be about 10 years old and the son of one of the men.

The light turned green and I had to move on, but I kept thinking about this.  There are a lot of nasty awful mean people in this world, but there are also some kind-hearted helpful ones.  What a wonderful example those two men were setting for a young boy.  I have encountered young men who don’t seem to understand what being a man is all about.  They get some perverted notion that it is all about sexual prowess.  But what that young boy was seeing was an example of real masculinity.  Men who are willing to jump out of their vehicle, and put their time and energy into helping someone in need.

What a better world we would live in if everyone got out and pushed.

Light Will Come

Long before its appearance,

There are hints of the coming glory.

Streaks of color creep around

The fringes of the earth’s orb.

The horizon at the ocean’s edge

Turns orange and pink and purple.

The palette of colors blending uniquely

With the dawn of each new day.

Then a pinpoint of vivid color

Overpowers the pastels.

I am amazed by how quickly

It silently rises and grows.

Sunrise in all its glory.

Too bright for human eyes.

A radiance too powerful,

A searing, piercing light.

There are hints of the coming glory,

The dawn of a new day is approaching,

And we will all be amazed by

A radiance too powerful for human eye.

A searing, piercing Light will come.

Feeling Rootless

Perhaps two months is too long for me to be away from home.

Two months is long enough that I want to begin putting down roots where I am, but the knowledge that I am leaving soon hangs over me.  I have been away from home so long that I am beginning to feel disconnected.  The consequence is that I feel like I am drifting, and I am unsure of where I actually wish to land.  As I float along on an unfamiliar breeze, my roots are hanging below me like strings from a balloon.  I wonder where they might drag along and catch hold.

I have tried to keep myself busy here.  Thus far, I have read 11 novels, knit 3 scarves, made costumes for 2 grandchildren, given 1 chapel message at my grandchildren’s school with another scheduled tomorrow, taken an online writing course, and done all the normal household things like laundry, grocery shopping, meal preparation, cleaning, and paying bills.  I have also made some friends here.  I walk the beach for an hour most days, sometimes with one of my new friends, who is a neighbor here at the condo units.

I really like the church we attend here.  Our Sunday School class is comprised mainly of couples our age.  We have been out to brunch with the group, and they are friendly.  The music and preaching at the church are top notch.

But…

I don’t really live here.  My permanent address is a long way away.  I have a lovely home that is furnished to my tastes.  The can opener and iron there actually work.  I don’t have to think about which seasonings and spices I have available when preparing a meal.  I have a bit of a part-time job and some volunteer activities.  I am involved at two different churches there, and I enjoy both.  I have lots of friends and acquaintances….although, no one to walk the beach with or even to trudge through snow drifts with me.

 I also have boxes and boxes of “stuff” that needs to be sorted if I am pondering a move.  The downsize done six years ago wasn’t nearly sufficient.  Going home also means facing some tough issues and decisions.

Where am I supposed to spend the rest of my life? 

What is there yet for me to accomplish?

And…

Since only my first class mail is being forwarded, what has happened to all my junk mail?  

Holograms and Truth

I recently read that there are scientists who believe that everything we know is actually part of a two-dimensional hologram.  We experience it as three-dimensional, but it is in fact two dimensional.

I have been pondering this.  We know and live in three dimensions of space and one of time.  We can create holograms which are two-dimensional, but appear three dimensional.  It seems to me that an omniscient God who probably knows more dimensions than we can imagine, could create our less dimensioned world, and that it would take us awhile to figure this out.  Perhaps, we are just now beginning to comprehend the multiplicity of dimensions which exist.  That there are realities beyond what we can perceive either with our senses or minds or experiments we contrive which are dependent on our senses and minds.

This reminds me a bit of Plato’s Cave in which chained persons cannot see or know the reality outside of the cave, so they cannot comprehend it.  They believe that reality is only what they can see.  They have no understanding of the bigger reality outside the cave.

I do not really understand String Theory or a unifying Theory of Everything, but I know they require multiple dimensions.  I have no difficulty, as a Christian, with scientists experimenting and reasoning to try and discover how our universe works….and if it is part of something infinite. 

As long as one is seeking truth, he will eventually come face to face with Truth….omniscient and infinite TRUTH.

Tide Pools

Created by the waves,

Carved in the sand,

Temporary pools,

From an artful hand.

Scratched out by fingers,

Pulled toward the sea,

Rippled, undulating,

Fascinating me.

Fragments of memories,

Puddled in my mind,

Pools of joy and sorrow,

Caught and left behind.

Guilt Trip in Publix

One of the things that bothers me when I am in Florida is the contrast between the haves and the have-nots.  Along the beach in the condos, the residents clearly do not want for much in the way of material things.  These are the ladies that stroll the aisles of Harris Teeter and Publix finely dressed and not in any hurry.  Their hair and nails are well cared for.  They have probably been to the spa for a massage recently.  Many of the male shoppers appear tanned and fit for their age.  They are retired and able to live well.  Some of them pack their groceries into hot little convertibles with the tops down.

At the check-out counter are clerks and baggers who should be retired, but who apparently cannot afford to be.  I would think if they were working to stave off boredom, they would choose a different type of employment.  They are unfailingly polite and gracious, but I wonder if any resentment burns underneath the façade.

Today the gentleman who bagged my groceries was wobbly just moving the twelve inches from the end of the counter to my cart.  He was wrinkled, stooped and gray.  He was also slow.  The check-out clerk helped him finish bagging, because he couldn’t keep up.

When he had placed the last bag in my cart, he looked up, smiled and said, “Help you to your car?”

I wanted to cry.  I wondered whether he could actually make it to my car!

I assured him, I could manage by myself and returned his smile.

I wondered if he was hoping I would say ‘no.’  He seemed so frail.  I tried to guess his age, but the ravages of old age seem to happen so unevenly.  Was he 10 years older than me?  That would make him in his early 80s, but he could still be in his 70s…not that much older than I am.

As usual, I have lots of questions and few answers.  But, it did make me feel privileged because I can choose whether or not I work, grateful for good health, and a bit guilty for enjoying blessings I don’t deserve.