If you think miracles don't happen second by second, even faster, consider again. Yesterday, I sat with my mother who is 80 and is recovering from a stroke, adding insult to injury since she is now 30 years into being disabled from a messed up surgery to remove a tumor under her skull. My hope vascillates from the desire for her to go back to pure potentiality or to stay and regain her swallowing muscles, allowing her reentrance to her assisted living home and NOT a nursing home. Day by day she recovers, dips into death, returns. Yesterday we sat in her hospital room, the patient in the room with her is an alcoholic who now has the shakes and a failing liver. My mother slept most the day but was also listening to the conversations going on next door with the woman's family members, trying to decide the next move.
"No money, no job," my mother said, her eyes still closed. "Shhhh...mom," I said, afraid she was judging. "What do they look like?" she asked. I knew the family was black, but I withheld this, wondering if indeed my mother was suggesting something I did not want to hear.
The afternoon went on. "Maybe you could read me something," my mother said, after we had watched a bit of TV, and she had listened to music on her headphones. "Sure!" I said, wishing I had brought a book, but there had to be a gift shop in the hospital, so I grabbed my purse and went looking. There it was on the first floor, of course, and inside beyond the It's a Girl (Boy)! balloons and flowers, I found a small rack of paperbacks and chose a book on prayers from the Bible, knowing my mother would love this. And I picked up Reader's Digest, too.
I went back and read two excerpts from the book on prayer and she truly enjoyed it. I knew I was feeding her food even though she hadn't had nourishment for nearly two weeks. When she became tired, I prepared her to rest. We could hear the nurse talking to the woman with the shakes, explaining that a third MRI was scheduled and if she moved about as with the other two, the orders were for her not to be allowed any more. The nurse suggested she wear headphones and listen to music and relax during the procedure.
I thought my mother was unable to sleep due to the talking, until she said, eyes closed, "She needs our headphones."
"Yes," I said, for I had been thinking that too, but doubted whether my mother would want to release her property, but now she was telling me what she wanted to do! My mother has given to her church for more than 40 years, but sometimes giving is hard for her, for all of us, on many levels.
I took the equipment to the other side of the room and handed it to the woman with the ailment. She and her grown daughter thanked me and her two grandsons made eye contact with me. Whatever all of us had been thinking whether it was me frustrated by their constant viewing of TV and talking or their hesitance at what kind of white folk we were?
"I'm so proud of you, mother," I whispered into her ear.
"It had to be done," she said. "Or they won't let her have another MRI. I've been in there and moved from a seizure. I know."
My mother spoke these words and I knew she didn't care what color they were or their financial status. Before she might have judged them, but now, now she saw them only as herself: in need of help. And she found the giving inside herself to be favorable and good.
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