The Humbling Place

And So Much More

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

I sit, I look, I quiet inside. I breathe. I take another breath, longer, slower, more purposeful. I scan the space for…actually, I’m not sure what I’m scanning for exactly, yet I know this place is special. I’ve been here before, and each time a million different thoughts race through my head, some of them settling into my heart.

The resilience in this place awes me. It’s like looking at all of our differences and all of our sameness at the same time. I see hope, I see fear, I see courage in faces that leave me wondering if they see that courage when they look in the mirror themselves.

I sit some more, I look some more, I quiet deeper still inside. I keep scanning the space, I keep noticing…the fragility blended with the strength, or is it resolve? Are they different?

The comfort of a lifetime partner’s hand on a shoulder. Quiet love transferred by touch, louder than any words could ever be. She looks so tired, so exhausted. His hand is steady and no doubt warm, and I see the concern in his eyes as he watches her weariness. After a few minutes she raises her head and turns to look at him, and their meeting eyes show pure love. She seems refreshed, renewed, still weary definitely, but at the same time, her spirit looks restored. Love did that.

Eventually that couple leaves, and another arrives and sits in the same chairs. The same thoughts. The same fears, hopes, faith.

I notice the Kindness Matters sign on the wall. I smile inside in acknowledgment, because it matters so very much here. It matters so very much everywhere. I notice the eight foot tall pink ribbon banner on the wall made up of tiny pink squares. I imagine each of those tiny squares as a person who, in a different lifetime, never imagined a pink ribbon having such a significance in their life. It is a beautifully sunny day today, the sun brilliantly shining light and warmth on that ribbon. I notice the wind chimes, for a second thinking it’s odd that they are inside where there is no breeze to release their melody. But the staff, those wonderfully caring and affectionate people, smiling as they call the next name, sometimes embracing with a hug, or hands reaching for hands, offering assurance that no one is alone in this space. I realize that even without an actual breeze, the melody of so much goodness and love and tender caring is the sweetest music to be heard here, and everywhere.

The moment I hear my name called, it catches me mid-breath. It releases me just as quickly as I know it is not really my name, it’s just pronounced the same. I am not here for me, I am a volunteer driver, assigned to drive a lady just a couple of years older than me to her cancer treatment. That fact alone humbled me before she even got into my car this morning. For the last few months, I have been mostly sidelined from my favorite activity of hiking by tendinitis in my ankle. I’ve been ordered to rest it, take some time off. It’s not an easy ask of me, because I live and breathe hiking, and as winter is losing its icy grip and we sneak in some milder days here and there, my restlessness grows. When I picked her up this morning, in my eagerness to make a little small talk, I blurted out my simple, temporary limitation in a hot second of forgetting who I was serving this day, this beautiful sunny day. I know it happens, we slip up, we say something that maybe feels important or interesting, only to realize silence could have been a better option. Sitting in this place, quieting my breath and my pace for the day, my perspective improves.

I sit, I look, I hope, I pray…For the very old, holding on. For the young, who, if you saw them anywhere else, you would never know. That is the great reminder…we never DO know, do we? For the helpers, they smile, they hug like friends, they are gentle and caring. And I am reminded of when they gave me that same wonderful presence. From the day someone mentioned the possibility, to the walking alongside me to schedule the biopsy, to the overwhelm racing through these veins during those in between days, to most of all, their steady gentleness. And afterward, the relief, the peace, the breathing calmed and steadied. The “normal” life returned to me.

Through it all… The Humbling.

Through it all…Kindness Matters.

Through it all…we walk alongside, as we walk each other home.