Starting
Point The
wealth of hearing, speaking and knowing love
By JAMES STEPHEN
BEHRENS
His name was Harry, and I used to
visit him in a New Jersey nursing home. He had suffered a stroke, and his bed
was just off to the right as soon as I entered the front door. He could begin a
sentence and then would lose his way with whatever connects the brain, language
and the tongue and would start to cry. He had little control over the movement
of his arms. I never saw him move his legs. He was in a large bed that was like
a babys crib, with metal bars on the side that kept him from rolling out
of the bed with the uncontrollable movement of his arms.
I would speak to him, and at first he would smile and start to say
a few things and then would cry as the words failed him. The nurses told me
that he was in no pain, that many people who suffer strokes cry uncontrollably.
I would reach through the bars and take his hand in mine and while holding his
hand talk to him and sometimes he would stop crying and seemed to listen. He
would smile, but then the smile would give way to tears when he attempted to
speak again. I would keep talking and holding his hand. He smiled, then cried,
then smiled again. His words came in sputters and pain.
All about me during those visits were other visitors who chatted
away with each other or with men and women they were visiting. Harry seemed so
far away by comparison. No one, it seemed, could really visit him
and connect with his mind and heart through language.
That was almost 30 years ago. Harry was old then, and I am sure he
has passed on. I moved on, too, and used to go back from time to time to see
him, and there was never any change in the routine.
I thought back on Harry earlier today. Of all things, a book on
the transcontinental railroad brought him to mind. It is the book we are having
read to us during our main meal at midday, and the section today was about the
high hopes people had 150 years ago as plans were being discussed to lay tracks
from one end of America to the other. The monk who read came to a sentence that
said that gold would be discovered in California and the rush would be on --
the tracks would be laid even faster. The desire for wealth made everything and
everyone move faster. Hopes would reach a frenzy.
And Harry came to mind. Why? I am not sure. Maybe some association
with connecting, with reaching a point, with high hopes of arrival and the
wealth of being able to do just that. Harry lay still -- all the gold in
California would have meant nothing to him. To speak would have been rubies and
diamonds for him. He had a heart. He could not speak from it.
A nurse told me that it was important to speak to Harry as if he
were normal. Tell him you care for him, she would say. Tell
him it is going to be all right.
Well, I cared for him and told him as much, but things were not
all right. I only had my words and the holding of his hand. Fools gold,
maybe. Not the real thing. But then, on second thought, what a different world
it would be if we tried every day to reach out to each other with the little we
have. We are the only wealth there is. How I wish we could as easily find a way
to reach into the heart of another and find the gold that is there.
All the wealth in the world is worthless when it is no longer
within our grasp. And, I wonder, what is its real worth, anyway? We will all
reach a still point in life when we want to hear love, speak love, know love
through touch, nearness, goodness. Perhaps we can know something of that day by
laying what tracks we can to bring us to the only wealth that matters in this
life and surely the life to come. Be still, be loving, receive love from
others.
Trappist Fr. James Behrens lives at Holy Spirit Monastery,
Conyers, Ga.
National Catholic Reporter, January 11,
2002
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