I.
I worked as a chaplain at a hospital for two years. That seems like an eternity ago. I sat next to bedsides and listened to patients spill their stories. I was present as mothers held their newborns for both the first and the last time. I tried to be a grounded presence as families walked with their loved ones through the dying process. And I learned that many times the only answer you can give to the question why is I don't know. I've forgotten most of the faces and names. I was there for some of the most intensely emotional moments in a family's life and while I can piece together some of the stories I can't really remember the specifics. I can't remember the people whose experiences intersected with mine changing the direction of my life. But I do remember one. For some reason I can't erase her from my mind. Her name was Mrs. May. Everyday she was at her son's bedside. He was in his late 40s-early 50s. Years before he had been in an accident involving his horse. I don't remember if he fell or if he was trampled but I do remember the accident left him brain damaged. He had spent the years following the accident in and out of the hospital over and over again. And every time his mother was there to sit by his side, a loving, familiar presence in a life torn apart. I would stop by to visit everyday just to be a face, a smile, someone to lend a listening ear and offer a quick hug. She shared stories about the man her son used to be. Young, handsome, witty, active, full of life. She shared stories about everything he'd lost. His ability to function, his health, his home, his wife, his life. The only thing that remained the same was the fact that he was her son and would always be her son. She had memories of who he used to be as a child, a teen, a young adult. Now the memories she was making consisted of holding his hand, keeping his lips and skin moisturized, wiping the drool from his chin, bathing his limp body, moving his limps to maintain some muscle tone, and rotating his position in an attempt to ward off bed sores. She never asked for this. Never dreamed of it. Never even considered that it might happen to her beautiful child. I'm sure she'd do anything she could to change that one moment that changed it all. But she was powerless to undo the past--she couldn't save him or trade places with him. The only thing she could do was show up everyday. The only thing she could do was be his mother, the one person to remember that once there was more than this, the one person to hold all the stories of who this man was and may still be somewhere deep inside. I admired her. I admired her not necessarily for her strength or her selflessness or her dedication, I admired her because even though the man lying in that bed in no way, shape, or form resembled the son she once knew she never stopped being his mother. She never doubted that her son's life still held worth even if others couldn't see that. She never stopped doing the things a woman does just because she's someone's mother. It was heartbreaking. It was. But it was also evidence of how big love can be.
II.
We can create for ourselves places inside to hide when life pummels us, places to lay our beaten bodies, places with sterile white walls and starched white sheets, places we can bring everything that's bruised and bleeding and leave them in the operating room of life, a sort of hospital for the soul. We can spread out all our broken pieces, sort through them, name them, line them up according to the amount of pain we feel. We can bind the things that are fractured, stitch the things splitting open, bandage the gashes crying out for attention. But the only ones who come out alive, the only ones who make it, are those brave enough to open their hearts to the healing touch of another. Only those brave enough to let someone else's eyes exam their bruised life make it out whole. Those who let others see them weak, fragile, bleeding, and raw, those willing to be there, naked and wounded, and not reach for a robe to cover the scars but instead lie perfectly still and place their very lives in someone else's care, are the ones most likely to recover from the tragedy of existence. And if you are brave enough to do this, if you can find that little piece of courage in the fear, not because you cannot learn how to bind your own throbbing wounds but because you know we are all here to relate and we will never fully heal until we learn to heal and be healed, then you are stronger than you think. We are all wounded healers here to commune in the corridors of the broken and wounded, here to let each other enter the whole of who we are in order to find that divine power inside which is the only thing that truly heals.
