Part 1 of 2
With it being Spring Break last week was slow around the church and so I had the chance to go out and visit some people I have not seen in a while and wanted to connect with. In this profession we say, "pay someone a visit," and I do not know why except to think it always costs something -- a free hour or day or week -- to go and see someone. But whatever is paid, I have found I usually receive back two-fold.
On Thursday I went and paid my visit to several friends in various nursing homes around town. These are the people now living in a different time -- without cell phones, or appointment books or even clocks. The time they are in is always whatever moment they are in. I knew I could drop in unannounced and would be as welcome that day as any day, and as all days.
One of my stops was to a memory care facility here in town where one of our church members has been for several years now. She lives with dementia and slowly it has eroded her ability to make new memories. When I visit I now have to tell her who I am. "It's your pastor," I say. "Oh honey," she says, "it's so good to see my pastor." I can tell it is.
On this day there's a concert in the commons room where a man in a black cowboy hat and boots is playing 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s western songs. He runs the gamut from Hank Williams's "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" to Marty Robbins' "El Paso". The residents sing along joyfully and with full throats on all the song's choruses and my friend claps appreciatively at the end of each song. But it seems there's special appreciation and meaning found in the chorus of Roy Rogers's "Don't Fence Me In":
O give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above
Don't fence me in
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love
Don't fence me in
For a moment we're all riding Trigger on some far away range without fences; we're all either Roy Rogers or Dale Evans -- if only in our minds.
I am about to leave and one of the residents wearing a green sweater looks at me and begins to walk across the commons towards me. I am nervous. She has the look in her eye that perhaps she wants to talk or dance. I resist the urge to make a break for it and decide to stay and talk.
"Do I know you?" she asks. "Do you come here often?" I tell her I am not sure she knows me, but that I am the pastor of Second Baptist and perhaps she has seen me there or here visiting. She shakes her head. "I know you from somewhere," she says. "Well, where are you from?" I ask. "Dalton, Georgia," she says. There is light in her eyes and a smile on her face. Up to this moment we have been in real time, if I did not know then perhaps I would think we were not in a dementia unit, but at some ordinary concert. But then she looks again at me with the light of life and says to me, "My mother is coming to visit me." Now I know it is the dementia that is speaking, for this woman is too old to have a mother still alive. I go along. "Oh, she's coming to visit? That'll be nice. I can tell you're looking forward to it." "Yes," she says, "and I hope she takes me back with her."
And, now, I'm not so sure. Is it just the dementia talking? Or is what she said as true and as real of a statement as anyone I will hear today?: She's waiting on her mother to come and visit from far away and take her back with her.
"I hope your mother does get to come and visit and that you get to go back with her," I say. "I hope so too," she says, the light still shining out of her eyes.
I tell her I need to be going. I have some other friends I need to visit, I say. We hug. "See you around," she says.
On the way out, I stop at the nurse's station and speak with the woman at the desk. I point back to the commons room and say, "The woman over there in the commons room in the green sweater." "Yes," she says and tells me her name. "Thank you," I say. "Well, she says her mother is coming to visit her and is going to take her back with her. And she would want me to ask; if you see her mother, will you please let her in?" The woman behind the desk looks back at me knowingly and without even a hint of oddity or strangeness, "I will," she says.
To Be Continued . . .
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