The summer of ’69 found me working on a brain tumor ward in a hospital in Colunmbia, Missouri. I landed there by accident. I knew no one in Columbia and therefore the patients who were assigned to me to care for became my people, every one in a phase of transitioning off. This meant that my new friends were sometimes only friends for a few blinks.
One woman, Evelyn, will forever live in my heart and soul.
Evelyn was elderly, maybe in her late 80’s, with a cloud of white hair, delicate ivory skin, huge gray moisture filled eyes, and a soft queenly elegance.
As I bed bathed her, chatting lightly, she watched me. I felt a wave of feelings wash through me with questions attached: Who was this woman? Who am I to be in this intimate place with her? At this tender time in her life? How can I possibly serve her when she has so clearly lived decades more than I? And where are her people?
And then, her articulate lilting voice: “The only way that I can bear this passage is to pretend. Pretending works. My garden. My garden was my haven, my heart. I am sitting in dappled sunlight watching my flowers respond to light, to breezes, to birds, to butterflies. The tea in my cup gets cold but I don’t mind. Beauty is alive and well and I am too.”
Then her voice changed with anguish, “I do not want to leave this beautiful world! I do not want to leave!”
My feelings blew in again but I did not speak as I kept tending to her body: Who is to say that where one goes after this world is not even more beautiful? Who knows? You will be leaving this body, but we do not know what else you will be leaving, and remember! When one leaves one place, one goes somewhere else. Surely you will find a new garden. How can you not?
Evelyn looked at me as if she heard me and a childlike sweetness filled her eyes. And she died. Right then. And her skin glowed with a pink hue, the color of rosebuds.