Pilgrimage

Walking down carpeted halls, I hear the murmuring sound of various TV programs rising and falling. Past doors –some open and some closed—there is the faint wafting hint of urine and antiseptic. For some, this is the last station on their pilgrimage – a nursing home. I’m here to visit a loved one. She doesn’t want to be here.

The brochure chirps happily that this facility “provides a home-like setting” where residents are “treated like family, attended to with care and skill in a loving atmosphere.”

Some residents are parked in wheelchairs along the hall, all of them facing the same direction. I pass and smile. “Hi Honey,” says a pleasant lady, and I stop and say hi and squeeze her hand. As I pass a gentleman, he looks searchingly in my eyes and whispers, “Help me,” and then looks past me as if I’d vaporized, to the doors beyond.

In the background, a song is playing. It’s the elevator-version of Georgy Girl. I stop for a second and listen to the lyrics outside of room 412, my aunt’s room:

Hey there, Georgy girl There's another Georgy deep inside Bring out all the love you hide and, oh, what a change there'd be The world would see a new Georgy girl…

I look around and wonder what all of these people were doing when this song was on the Top Ten chart. Maybe dropping kids off at school, mowing lawns, entering or leaving an office somewhere, laughing with a friend …

An aide wheels a lady by in a wheelchair. The older woman has a downy poof of white hair, and the aide is laughing with her, saying, “Come on now Helen, you know you drive the men crazy when you put on a little lipstick.” The older lady says something I can’t hear, and they both laugh as they disappear down the hall.

As I enter this place, I realize I’ve walked around as a foreigner for much of my life. I’ve been a foreigner to the different physical, racial and cultural experiences of others. I’ve wanted –and sought after—understanding, but let’s face it: I’ve lived my life as white, able-bodied and upper-middle class. Even the most earnest empathy stops short of lived experience. There’s one way though, that my “foreigner” status is changing. I am moving through seasons that were once foreign to me.

I remember as a kid hearing my mom say (somewhat repeatedly), that she was “so tired.” I puzzled over it because I literally didn’t know what she was talking about. Boundless energy was my gift, which might explain her comment. I simply didn’t get her season -- what it would be like to raise young children, to be “on” for every waking hour. Eventually, I entered that season myself, and it all became clear.

So, what is it like, living here at this point of pilgrimage? A small group has corralled their wheelchairs into an open multi-purpose room with a large TV. They’re watching, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but almost all of them are asleep, heads dropped to chest, or tilted back, mouths open. A more lively group is down the hall. They are playing a version of wheelchair “volleyball,” but the ball is a balloon, which they are whacking over the net with pool noodles. One woman loudly yells, “I’d like to take a break!”

A short two decades earlier, I had been picking up kids at preschool, and the scene was strikingly similar, though the nappers were on mats, and the games were different. I guess Lion King was right – this is the Circle of Life. Our final season bears the imprint of the beginning of our journey. There are, no doubt, hidden accomplishments represented in this room; and yet, all here are now as dependent as when they were toddlers. It might be easy to see this as one of the cruelties of life, but the symmetry of it makes me wonder… Do we circle back to this dependence in preparation for something ultimate, and eternal and good?

Anyone who can remember being lifted out of the back seat of the car as a child, and carried to bed, knows the kind of freedom that a trusting dependence can bring. We’re raised to grow out of that kind of dependence, to stand on our own two feet, and yet… Do we, deep down, long for the assurance and comfort of simply being carried?

Perhaps God, in his wisdom, designed life’s mandala just this way. As T.S. Eliot famously said:

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

We’ll be carried as we sleep, and wake up to a new day in a place we deeply know.