Here I sit in my "island
room" at BA somewhere in Utah, struggling to become a true castaway. This
assisted care facility is not a hospital, but it is a place where many of us
suffer from one kind of malady or other. The root of the word
"hospital" is guest, host, stranger. Our feelings about hospitals
range from deep gratitude to fear. We feel "estranged." a wary
"guest," and always ambiguous about the work rhythm of our
"host." Why do they awaken us to see if we are ok? And what of the
night sounds: the soft shoes racing across the floor; the chatter at the
nurse's station. The moonlit brilliance of stainless steel and porcelain, the
smell of alcohol and sometimes the subtle sound and smell of Death approaching
your hallway.
When one is marooned, getting your
bearings is critical. As I have pointed out in other blogs, routine/ritual is
one way of ordering your life. Mornings for a devotional/scriptures, a short
walk up and down the halls, a cup of mint tea to settle the jumpy stomach.
Breakfast, another walk, an appropriate foreign film, some notes on a possible
e-mail or blog. The help here is hospitable and they treat me as a guest. My
Level One status allows me freedom to take short errands with family and
friends. I am surrounded by books, a computer and a television.
But I often find myself lonely, starved
for conversation. When Samuel Johnson's Rasselas finds a would- be city dweller
trying to be a country shepherd, he finds the man near madness. He quickly
packs his bags and follows Rasselas and company into Cairo, a kind of 17th
century Portland, Oregon. He needs to talk and to listen. Conversation is for
me a form of prayer. For our distraught "shepherd" the pastoral
[rural] life has isolated him from other people. For some, like my son-in-law
solitude works. I would rather talk and listen than scale the mountains,
mountain goat style. Is your solitude self chosen or are you imprisoned by
circumstances? Are you a mere face in the crowd or the congregation? The worst
kind of solitude, I think.
Is it possible that solitude is a mere
frame of mind---as is loneliness? However, I noticed my last time through
Marquez' A Hundred Years of Solitude that solitude turns out to be a
negative term, something closer to loneliness or isolation. Gold coins, epic
love affairs and numerous military conquest and businesses, yet nothing
remains. Emptiness. A journey into demise--and a wonderful warning to the
reader. Nothing material in this life but love will remain. With a list of more
than a dozen versions of solitude, I am forced to limit myself to a couple.
Solitude is aloneness; solitude is sometimes loneliness; solitude can be decay,
the inability to withstand time itself. The village Macando "will,"
says the last Aureliano, "soon be wiped out by the wind." Even the
precious hieroglyphics of the family parchment will be only partially
translated. Words die, words which capture our past. How do we survive? Along
with scripture and "walking prayers" [I seem to be better on my feet
than on my knees], my last, most critical resource is the people around me.
In his stirring account of life in a
Nazi concentration camp, Victor Frankel discovered that [1] love and [2] work
[exercise?] provided the logos [meaning] he so desperately sought. As the
camp's only doctor, he lost himself in saving others. When most of the camp was
"transferred" out, Frankel volunteered to stay with the sick. Those
who left were never heard from again. Out of that "work" came love,
and that love for others saved him. If I'm reading the Gospel of John
correctly, love of others lies at the heart of meaning in life.
Let me send along an excellent DVD
recommendation on Netflix [streaming or disc]. "Happiness" strikes at
the heart of our search for meaning. The most unhappy country in the world?
Japan. The happiest? Denmark. And it seems the more wealthy people become, the
less happy they become.
You ask me what loving others means? I try
to meet the simple needs with warmth and affection. A quick shoulder rub, a
hand on the arm, a kind word to the confused, walking with the Parkinson's
patients who wobble their way heroically down the hall, listening to endless
redundancy from the demented, the 10 minute retention of those struck down by
Alzheimer's.
There's hope, then, for all of us
castaways. At least I'm not talking to a volleyball with a painted smiley face.