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| broken people, beautiful hearts
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her name was beth. she was very broken. she had a skeleton bending disease and had been treated viciously before she was taken from her home and put in our facility. she could neither talk nor hear. when we got her she gave no indication that she had any awareness of time, any ability to interact with the rest of the world.
i worked with the kids. we had a little girl named karen whom i loved with all my heart and who was born without a brain. all we could do was keep her joints from freezing up on her, but as i worked with her to bend her ankles and elbows, things that i assumed would cause pain, this smile full of light would radiate out of her. beth would use the foot that still worked for her and push her wheelchair down to the room where i worked with karen on a carpet on the floor. did you ever have someone watch you so hard that you felt their gaze? that was beth. i commented to other workers that she was more aware of her surroundings than we had given her credit for. they didn't see it.
after i got done with karen, i would carry her back to her adult sized crib and then push beth around for a while as i visited other kids. our kids were severely birth defective and even sitting here twenty years later, the memory of some of them raises the hair up on my arms. one of our most severely defective kids had her face on the side of her head, literally, and she could grab you through the rails of her crib with a grip like a lobster. but we were all they had. i was in three days a week and doubled as a multi-purpose man. i painted the entire place. that is a summer i'd just as well forget. sheesh. we had no money and about half my time was given for free. well, i will say that half my time involved no money. what i got was WAY more valuable.
i always went in the same three days. even though i was largely a "volunteer," i like having some order to my life. about a month after beth became one of our kids, the nurse was bathing another child and beth came in. she had one little bent foot that she pushed herself with, and she made it all the way to the bathroom. the nurse found that interesting and gave her a bath and shampoo. it took about two weeks for the nurse to realize what beth was doing. "buck, she gets a bath on the days you come in." i'm a tough guy. i have had bones broken and days later realized it and gotten them set. but that day i cried. this wondrous child who had no language, no interaction with the world except in those walls, had found a way to care about someone ... me. she knew i would be playing with her. we ran through the halls. okay. i ran and pushed her. and she would throw her head back and laugh noiselessly. before i left, i would scruff her hair with my hand. and the only thing she could do was make sure she was clean and pretty for me when i came in.
this little broken person would never know a man's loving touch, never have children, never be able to say the names of the folks who cared for her. but her heart was so beautiful that she found someone in her world to care about. someone in the forums the other day asked what love is. no one would have understood if i had answered beth. but now you understand. thanks for stopping by.
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Posted by AllThingsBuck on 2008-09-04 14:03:49 | Rating: | Views: 50
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Wow. This is a very sad post. Thank you for shedding light on this subject. Reading this makes me want to hug my girlfriend and kids tighter tonight. I thank God that I am blessed and I will make sure to remember this when I "think" I am having a bad day! :-(
C
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Posted by douxdemure
on 2008-09-04 14:33:23
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Thank you that brought tears to my eyes.
So many people refuse to see inside a person...they only concentrate on the outside. When our bodies are broken and/or incapable of expressing ourselves that does not mean our hearts are not! Our bodies are just vessels for our souls, the insides baby, thats what matters.
People, please stop, take a moment longer out of your busy hectic lives to listen to the heart and soul of another person. Don't just shrug them off because they don't communicate the same as you - I wish everyone could do that.
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Posted by Sabremaven
on 2008-10-03 07:39:08
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