Sanctuary

Another sleepless night. Another day at Hamilton General. By mid day I’m feeling overwhelmed by the pain of the place. Hospitals aren’t the place you go when you’re feeling groovy. And though there are many stories of hope and joy – babies born, lives saved – I can’t help but succumbing to the oppressive feeling of sadness here.

Maybe it’s the opaque sky that presses down on Hamilton. Maybe its my uncharitable judgment of the folks who people Southern Ontario. So many people overweight, ashen faced, grey like the landscape. Who can blame them? If I lived here, what would I do? No place to run through the woods, few hills to climb.

I had a great run or two when I was here a year and a half ago – up Mount Nemo, along a side trail well trodden in my high school years, and along the Niagara Escarpment through near forty degree heat. I remember pounding along the rocky, root strewn trail, my body slick with sweat, my head dense with recollections. But that was summer. And it was a novelty to run in such oppressive heat. There are so few places to escape the insufferable whine and drone of cars and industry and humanity, here. And winter seems incomprehensibly long. I too would likely collapse on the couch at the end of each day.

Now, my head is still whirling from last night’s macerations. I’m trying to square circles and untangle Gordian knots while staring at the ceiling.

Its not working.

In and out of the ICU. Mabel is making an extraordinary recovery. How can someone have open heart surgery on Thursday, and on Saturday be so full of life, of love? Of faith? I walk down the now familiar halls, feeling the press of sorrow in some of the hospital’s palliative spaces, amazed at the resilience of this amazing woman. Of humanity. We survive the most extrordinary things.

By the end of the afternoon my nerves are shot. Too much sorrow. Too much sadness. In the hospital. Elsewhere. I seek shelter. I go to the Sanctuary. Its peaceful. There are no comings and goings. I’ve been walking around for hours waiting for release. I let go. Tears, of course, though I swore there wouldn’t ever be another. I curse myself at first, and then give up and let go again. I slip into meditation and try to remember my vows. Patience. Peace. Love.

When I slip out of the stillness I realize I’m famished. I eat. Buy a Greek salad and tuck in. Reconcile my travel plans. At a table near by I see a man I’ve noticed for the last few days, who I’ve said hello to, but not stopped to talk to. I’ve been absorbed, with my father, with Mabel, with my own pathetic self pity.

His name is John. I invite myself to sit with him while he eats diner, drinks tea. We chat. A week ago he fell while drawing a bath, and for half an hour was trapped beneath scalding water dousing his face, head, neck, shoulders and chest, as he shouted for mercy. First, second and third degree burns. He has no hair left. He’s ashamed of his own face. 58, he lived alone. A neighbor finally heard him and the superintendent of his building opened the door. “The morphine was great,” he said. He doesn’t remember how he got from Kitchener to Hamilton. “I just woke up and I was here.” He has five kids. “Have you had any visitors?” I try to be tactful. “It’s been a hard year,” he explains. “I didn’t want them to see me like this again.” I take his hand as we say goodbye and hold it for a while.

Nobody should go through this alone.

John.

Diane, who I met yesterday, whose husband, emerging from his fifth heart attack, asked for a divorce because her business was loosing money. She had slept in a chair in the ICU waiting room for two days while he underwent bypass surgery.

Sanctuary.

A place of safety.

Sometimes it seems that everything about our existence on this spinning earth is precarious. Sometimes it seems that love itself is the only thing that makes us safe.