Alone and Lonely

I spent as much time with Kari as I could. I loved her so much but didn’t know how to show it. I didn’t know what to do with her so I took her to McDonalds. 

We shared hamburgers, fries and a soda and she played in the playground.

I saw forlorn dads doing the same with their kids and I felt like a failure.

On one long weekend off, I called my ex-husband, James, to see if I could get Kari.

A woman answered, “Hello.”

“Uh, can I talk to James?”

When he got on the phone I asked, “Can I get Kari for the weekend?”

“She’s at her aunts.”

We didn’t have any relatives in the area, so I asked, “Who is that?”

“I’m married.”

Winter came in cold and blustery. I felt like a dead leaf as I tumbled around the streets of Memphis. Barely functioning, I had called in sick so many times I was about to lose my job. One afternoon I overheard the staff chaplain say “Earl.”

I interrupted, “Is he the Earl who was here before?”

“Yes,” he said.

“How long has he been back?” I demanded.

“About a week.”

“You tell him to get his ass up here right NOW!”

Earl arrived without calling. After “Hello,” he said, “About your message. I wasn’t in the office when John got there so he wrote down what you said and put it on the message board for all the chaplains to see.” (I might have said something about my cowboy boots.)

I hadn’t thought about everyone knowing what I said, or how he would feel. I hesitated then said, “I’m sorry,” and followed with, “Why are you back here?”

“I’m doing a second CPE unit.”

We didn’t hug, or even touch, but started eating supper together again.

As Christmas approached, I made sure Earl knew about the party on our floor. It was on my day off so I took Kari, who had just turned four, with me. When she met Earl, she leaned against his legs and chattered to him to keep his attention focused on her.

The day after I took Kari back to my ex-husband he called, “Who the hell is Earl?”

In Christ,

Berta

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Photo courtesy of Flickr

Earl Would Tell You

Earl would tell you how angry I was when we were introduced.

Sitting at the nurses’ station one afternoon I saw him. Tall with dark wavy hair and wearing a blue lab coat, he was walking away down the hall. 

I leaned toward the nurse I was working with and said, “Ralph, do you see that guy?”

“Yeah?”

“I’d like to go out with him.” Now, I never dated men I worked with, and I guarded my private life at work. My heart skipped a few beats. How could I think this, let alone say it out loud.

“Haven’t you met Earl? He’s the chaplain,” Ralph said.

Raising my hands as a shield, I said, “Chaplain? Never mind! I don’t want anything to do with a preacher.” There was no room in my life for a Jesus freak to tell me how to live.

When Earl came back up the hall Ralph called him over, “Earl, this is Bert.”

Earl looked me in the eye, “Hi.”

“Hi.” I looked away. How am I supposed to talk to a chaplain?

Earl worked days and I worked afternoons, and he began calling and inviting me to eat supper with him in the cafeteria. We talked. I told him about my three-year-old daughter, Kari. I tried to explain why I’d left her with her father when we divorced but couldn’t. I filled him in on my nightly escapades at The Caravan—my bar. Maybe I was trying to shock him, but I learned he grew up in North Memphis and had his own stories to tell.

He was a seminary student at Candler School of Theology of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He was doing an internship in Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) there at Methodist Hospital Central in Memphis. I didn’t know what any of that was, and I didn’t ask.

Early in my shift one afternoon in late August, Earl came to see me without calling. “Can you come out by the elevators for a minute?” he asked. We stood alone, “My internship is over and I’m going back to seminary.”

With my arms folded over my chest I asked, “When are you leaving?”

“My car is already packed and ready to pull out. I wanted to say good-bye.”

“When are you coming back?”

“I haven’t decided whether or not I am coming back.”

We hugged for the first time. A moment. And he got on the elevator and was gone.

I didn’t understand what I felt as I remembered his arms around me. The dam burst and tears poured from eyes that had been dry for many years. I told myself I didn’t care about him.

In Christ,

Bert(a)

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MRSA Isolation

While in rehab in Shepherd Center after my spinal cord injury, a culture of my trach grew out MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), (pronounced mer-sa), the very contagious, hard to kill superbug. My lungs had filled with infected mucus and I wasn’t able cough.

The nurses moved me into an isolation room. Every staff member donned yellow paper gowns, blue masks, latex gloves and safety glasses before entering my room.

The nurses began to “cough” me. Think one hard CPR compression only below my diaphragm along with my weak attempt to cough. It worked so we “repeated until clear”. The first thing anyone said on entering my room was, “Let’s cough.”

Every assisted cough shot searing pain to both of my shoulders, and it took a month of coughing to clear my lungs. Though still in isolation, but not coughing, my nurses came in without isolation garb. I knew who each one was by her voice.

I knew each woman’s story of life. Their loves, their hopes, their dreams and their desires. I knew who they were and that I would remember many.

Earl and I returned to Shepherd nine years later. I asked about several but only found two. One woman had cleaned my room five days a week and had achieved her desires. She had married her boyfriend and was working in the finance office at Shepherd.

The second woman, a new registered nurse, had a passion for working with persons with spinal cord injuries. She had advanced to the role of clinical coordinator for Shepherd, married and had two sons.

I remembered a few names. Jesus never forgets one.

Our Shepherd calls us His sheep and we know His voice. He knows our stories from the beginning. Our loves, hopes, dreams and desires.

“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me” (John 10:14 NIV).

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27 NIV).

In Christ,

Berta

Photo Courtesy of Free Flickr Images