Glimpses of Eternity

 Beauty and grace crown heads of gray in remembrance of days long ago.  As a teenage nursing assistant walking the placid halls of a rural Midwest care center, I grasped life's lessons of physical ailments, fading minds, and glimpses of souls craving someone to touch and love.  In those days, I found a calling to embrace and seek presence in these momentary encounters.  There was a woman who would cry out words forgotten by her dementia, and I would sometimes sit with her for a moment searching the person behind the anguish.  I caressed her soul with kind words and brief stories, and one afternoon she paused in her repetition to smile at me.  When she smiled her face lit up like dawn's graceful entrance, and we became friends.  In the summer, I often worked the night shift, walking quietly among the halls of sleep and sorrow to comfort and tuck in.  I delighted in the serenity of those quiet nights, stirring my soul in the presence of angels and taking moments to write brief passages of poetry on my breaks.  Gentle moments of reflection.

In the halls of a rural care center more than twenty years ago, I tasted the first bittersweet fruits of giving my heart for love to be torn in the reality of death.  Comforting a man whose wife and roommate passed on to eternity, I was too young for wisdom and full comprehension of his grief, so I silently held his hand and it seemed enough.  I found pain and beauty in the thread of life that diminished in the shallow veins of life's edge.  I was touched by two patients in particular, both dying of cancer and seeking comforting gestures of love.  Both of them exuded something unique in their spirits by the grace in which they embraced life and death.  Both of them grasped something deep in my soul, and I wrote these poems in their honor.

Jacob

The breathing machine hummed like the breath of angels,
a gentle droning rhythm...

Often I explored this institution--
Reaching a pale comforting hand for the ill and bereft,
But nothing changed my life more than
The silent man who laid still in a quiet recession from life.
With heavy gray eyes, he gazed faintly upwards,
Pain seeping every pore of his being
And whispered in a breathless voice
Like rustling leaves on a lucid October morning.
"Please don't leave.  Please stay.  Just hold my hand."
A gaunt bony hand grasped my own-- the touch of aged silk.
I stayed by his side,
Feeling the cancer invade his skeleton form.

I never knew him in life before cancer crept into his flesh,
Yet his gentle hands and graceful spirit grabbed at my young heart.
When he passed on to eternity, the dam broke.
I wept with his family and tasted their sorrow, and I embraced their deep love.

Not long after his passing, I had a dream...
The man confined to his bed weary for cancer that consumed him.
I knelt by his side and hugged him, feeling the tide rise to eternity.
God's love shone upon him like the purest sunshine on a gentle June morning.
A wave of light bathed in the fullness of peace flowing over us.
The dying man was called home and heaven called to my soul...


Mildred

Her eyes were sapphire oceans of peace.
The flesh of her face glistened
Like transparent satin.
I could taste her tears
As though they were a flowing May drizzle
Soaking my swollen tongue.
Silently, I watched her drift
Into a painless sleep,
Lethargic from the care I had given.
A single tear journeyed its way down my cheek,
Falling into her thin white hair--
Falling for injustice.
Breathing deeply, I inhaled her beauty--
Lingering with the soft scent of musk
That powdered her frail arms.
And I felt a calm strength engulf me...

Glimpses of eternity grounded my faith and shaped my worldview.  In these fragile encounters, grace not lost but found in beauty for life and death, gifted by sacredness and holy ground.  These precious moments ordained for transcending our humanness to bear God's image of love.  Cherished moments to treasure up.

"They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.  And night will be no more.  They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light."  Revelation 22:4-5