Thursday, February 12, 2015

VISITING MY PEOPLE


Life can be lonely for some of us, it all depends upon what God’s plan is and like God; His plan is mystical. We don’t know why things pan out like they do, and why they happen to certain of us and not others, what does it all mean?

Recently as a co-chair to a committee that oversees the lives of certain people who have no one else to advocate for them but the committee, two of the guardianees became ill, so ill they required hospitalization. Both these people are in their 70’s or close to it and have suffered all their lives with physical and mental disabilities. They are the ‘forgotten people’ of God’s creation, set aside from the world that we all live in and hardly appreciate. I call them ‘My People” because they are in need of someone being interested in their welfare and although they reside in a home built for their care, they also reside in relative anonymity. The staff that cares for them loves them, and that is important, love is a great equalizer sometimes. But the outside world knows little of nor does it care about the daily existence of someone who sits in a wheel chair where their body is so mangled and entangled, contorted and distorted, that she can not even swallow without danger of asphyxiation or choking. Nor do they concern themselves with a gentleman who is blind, sits in a wheel chair and has life so hard he is constantly in the ER of a hospital, while the doctors try their best to figure out why we vomits up a coffee grind like substance and can’t swallow. Feeding tubes? That is a way if life for both!

On a quiet Saturday night, I took a trip to their home and visited them after leaving my daughter off, who has issues of her own. As they sit in their wheel chairs, their attention is far off somewhere else. Maybe it is a memory of a loved one, maybe an event, or maybe just sadness prevails their souls and hearts, dulling their minds from the life around them, if you can call that life.

I approached one, the lady and asked her how she felt, knowing she was recently released from the hospital, holding her hand, she looked at me, turning her head slowly, penetrating my eyes with hers, they expressed her whole heart without words, just the look of surprise that someone was even next to her, let alone holding her hand. I did all the talking, she did all the listening and she told me a lot about her. I wonder, where does this sadness come from, and when will it ever leave us?

The gentleman I found in his wheel chair too, asleep. His eyes closed he was in a semi-conscious state of sleep, he could hear me and yet he slept, his head turning from side to side as I tried to communicate my concern to him. I have known him a long time; so long that he has visited my home on a number of occasions. He is a big storyteller, relating stories about how he rides the subways and has martinis; all of it impossible, and with his salty language endeared himself to both my wife and me.

When I read the newspapers, or visit Facebook, and read about the wars and hatred because we are Jews or Muslims or Christians, I toss that all in the giant heap of crap that prevails in this world and wonder how we can waste money on arms and attrition, yet not embrace ourselves in the name of God, not Muhammad, not Jesus, but the true maker of all of us?

As I drove home that night, I wondered why my people exist. Why did God put them on this Earth and why he left them in such horrors? Did He do it to punish them? I doubt it; did He do it to set an example? Maybe but what? Or did He do it so they could teach us, perhaps raise the element of the Human spirit higher than it is? Maybe we need to reexamine what humanity is suppose to mean. Maybe we need to have someone who can pound us on our collective heads and tell us: destroy your weapons, discard your religions, and seek human justice not for yourselves but for others. When will we ever learn? We suffer as a collective species, seeking to destroy ourselves in the name of religious prophets, yet we ignore God, and his own creation, one that we will either save or destroy.


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