Love, Sacrifice, and Loss
V-Day approaching, some thoughts
For some reason during the time I was volunteering at Goldwater hospital, reading to, and writing down the dictations of severely disabled adults, love was generally the topic of choice. Many of these people were confined to beds on dismal wards for nearly 100% of their time. There was no privacy and yet in a very real sense they were more alone than we can understand.
Many of these patients were quadriplegics who had difficulty with speech. After working with them, I grew to be able to understand them, but it wasn’t easy. I learned their particular difficulties, their personal brand of spoken short hand.
Once a woman with Parkinson’s asked me to hold her hand while I read. She could not reach for my hand, nor grip it back, but she could feel my touch. After a while she said softly “This is so nice.” I said “Yes, Yeats really is beautiful.” And she said “No, holding hands is nice.” In isolation our souls cry out for human touch.
One of my fellow volunteers said that she thought it was odd that so many people, clearly facing the ends of their lives, would want to read and write only about love, sex, and romance. But it makes perfect sense. Many people we worked with had survived spouses and felt they would be reunited in heaven. Additionally they seemed to feel their connections with others were the most important thing.
One woman I worked closely with for months. She was on oxygen, paralyzed by a stroke. Her voice was a gravely whisper. Over and over she wanted to dictate about picnics with her husband, their first date, a time he brought her flowers. These were the things she wanted written down for her grandchildren. One evening on my way out a new male nurse stopped me. He said “I only just learned she was a Broadway actress for 20 years! What a life she must have lived!” She had never mentioned that to me once. With so little energy for speech, she wanted her words to count.
One year my parents held a fourth of July party and only a few people showed up. By coincidence they wound up with all Muslim guests, with the exception of our family, including my grandparents. It was perhaps the most patriotic fourth of July I ever attended. In the evening the conversation turned to love and romance, and one by one these couples told their stories. It isn’t what you would have expected-not an arranged marriage among them.
One couple ran away together and left their native country, risking imprisonment and even death, rather than be made to marry others. A woman defied her parents when she was still practically a child and insisted she would die unless she was allowed to marry a man beneath her social class. The marriage took place and history proved her choice was beyond right, it was something transformative. In another couple a man glimpsed his future wife on a crowded street, and somehow knew immediately she was the one, and went against everything he had been taught in order to win her heart.
All of these people went against some of the dictates of their religion to pursue the love of their lives. Did that lessen their faith? No, all remained deeply spiritual. You can go against one tenant, particularly one mostly emphasized by self-appointed holy men.
Finally, Donna Britt wrote a lovely column today on the bonds of love between slaves in the United States before the Civil War. The tremendous hardships they endured and how they risked life and limb to be with their beloved.
Maybe in the darkest times we realize how vital our relationships are. When faced with death, we suddenly are willing to risk it for love. And in other times, we are able to forget about its power, stick it on the back burner, pretend we are too intelligent to be fooled by it.
But it’s important, if we know who we’re going to run to in a crisis, that we don’t wait for the crisis to happen.
Donna Britt's column:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15688-2005Feb10.html
For some reason during the time I was volunteering at Goldwater hospital, reading to, and writing down the dictations of severely disabled adults, love was generally the topic of choice. Many of these people were confined to beds on dismal wards for nearly 100% of their time. There was no privacy and yet in a very real sense they were more alone than we can understand.
Many of these patients were quadriplegics who had difficulty with speech. After working with them, I grew to be able to understand them, but it wasn’t easy. I learned their particular difficulties, their personal brand of spoken short hand.
Once a woman with Parkinson’s asked me to hold her hand while I read. She could not reach for my hand, nor grip it back, but she could feel my touch. After a while she said softly “This is so nice.” I said “Yes, Yeats really is beautiful.” And she said “No, holding hands is nice.” In isolation our souls cry out for human touch.
One of my fellow volunteers said that she thought it was odd that so many people, clearly facing the ends of their lives, would want to read and write only about love, sex, and romance. But it makes perfect sense. Many people we worked with had survived spouses and felt they would be reunited in heaven. Additionally they seemed to feel their connections with others were the most important thing.
One woman I worked closely with for months. She was on oxygen, paralyzed by a stroke. Her voice was a gravely whisper. Over and over she wanted to dictate about picnics with her husband, their first date, a time he brought her flowers. These were the things she wanted written down for her grandchildren. One evening on my way out a new male nurse stopped me. He said “I only just learned she was a Broadway actress for 20 years! What a life she must have lived!” She had never mentioned that to me once. With so little energy for speech, she wanted her words to count.
One year my parents held a fourth of July party and only a few people showed up. By coincidence they wound up with all Muslim guests, with the exception of our family, including my grandparents. It was perhaps the most patriotic fourth of July I ever attended. In the evening the conversation turned to love and romance, and one by one these couples told their stories. It isn’t what you would have expected-not an arranged marriage among them.
One couple ran away together and left their native country, risking imprisonment and even death, rather than be made to marry others. A woman defied her parents when she was still practically a child and insisted she would die unless she was allowed to marry a man beneath her social class. The marriage took place and history proved her choice was beyond right, it was something transformative. In another couple a man glimpsed his future wife on a crowded street, and somehow knew immediately she was the one, and went against everything he had been taught in order to win her heart.
All of these people went against some of the dictates of their religion to pursue the love of their lives. Did that lessen their faith? No, all remained deeply spiritual. You can go against one tenant, particularly one mostly emphasized by self-appointed holy men.
Finally, Donna Britt wrote a lovely column today on the bonds of love between slaves in the United States before the Civil War. The tremendous hardships they endured and how they risked life and limb to be with their beloved.
Maybe in the darkest times we realize how vital our relationships are. When faced with death, we suddenly are willing to risk it for love. And in other times, we are able to forget about its power, stick it on the back burner, pretend we are too intelligent to be fooled by it.
But it’s important, if we know who we’re going to run to in a crisis, that we don’t wait for the crisis to happen.
Donna Britt's column:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15688-2005Feb10.html