Fueling the Universe

Seems fitting that the first post here since my mother’s death is about kindness. It’s just been on my mind lately with so much negativity in the news.

Here’s the thing about kindness. I’m convinced it’s a force that is always out there, an ingredient in a healthy universe swirling above and between us all, and it’s our duty to keep it properly maintained. Sort of like keeping an engine oiled. If we fail, things start to slow down, warning lights flash, and we just know something bad is going to happen.

When I think about kindness in general, I naturally recall all that was done for me over the course of my mother’s illness last year.

My inner circle of friends and family kept me functioning in the world when I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. When I lost hours upon hours at hospitals and doctors’ offices and they knew I wasn’t eating, my girlfriends gave me a canvas basket with granola bars and snacks and chocolate and things I could grab on the way out the door – on each item were written words of encouragement, or scripture, or just “I love you”.  I got texts daily asking how I was, how things were going, or just an emoji, because some days there were no words. I got meals. I got cards. I got flowers.

But this support is sort of what I expected from these people because it is what I would have done for them too. We’re all on this journey together, right? Sometimes we walk happily in the clouds, but all too often we are trudging in the muck, and it’s easier if we pull each other along.

Then there was the staff at the nursing home, the rehab facility, and the infusion center. These were nurses, receptionists and kitchen workers who offered cups of tea, extra pillows, and a sympathetic ear . I realized later that while I had only experienced this compassion once, they had given out this same love to people like me a thousand times over. They knew what kind of beast I was – my needs, my exhaustion, and my grief – even if I didn’t know myself. The staff made me feel less alone in the day-to-day, and thus had created a “safe space” for people like me to live in – a space that I almost missed when the crisis was over.

And then I had the two acts of kindness from strangers that I never saw coming.

The first time was five years ago after my mother’s initial diagnosis with breast cancer. I was sitting by her bedside on a hard plastic chair in the recovery unit at Mercy Hospital. It had taken surgeons three hours to remove a lump the size of a gumball, and I was waiting for her to wake up. It was just my mother and I in our little corner, and though I had the curtain closed, I could hear other surgery patients and their families sitting only inches or feet away. I had been trying to catch a short nap by leaning forward on the foot of the bed with my head on my folded arms when my brother called.

“How did things go?” he asked.

“Good, I think. They got the lump out,” I began quietly, “but they discovered the cancer had spread to a bunch of lymph nodes in her armpit, so they removed those too…”

“Okay. What’s that mean?” he asked. “What happens next?”

“I don’t know,” I choked out. “It’s not good. It just means that it’s spread and we just don’t know… We just wait…”

I took a deep breath and we chatted a few more minutes. After hanging up, I busied myself with trying to find a cup of water. When I returned, the patient in the next bed was getting ready to leave with his family. This man, a big guy with a gray buzz cut, had a giant bandage around his knee and was being taken away in a wheel chair by a nurse, but the wife hung behind a minute. She wrapped her shawl around her, turned to me, and then took me lightly at the elbow, leaned in and whispered in my ear “I’ll be praying for you, hang in there…” – and before I could respond and tell her how much I appreciated those words, she was gone.

Uneventful years pass by, and the cancer came back in my mother’s bones, literally from her head to her toes. Within ten months of this new diagnosis, and radiation, and chemo, and just plain hell, I found myself in a sunny room with new wood floors at Gilchrist Hospice. My uncle, my brother and I all sat together, stunned that she had actually just died moments earlier, on that day. That day when we sat out in the sunny garden with the yellow tulips and the waterfall, and had just ordered pizza because we were told that morning that we still had days – plural – left to go. We just happened to walk back in the room to check on her when we saw the quickened breathing, called the nurse, and before we knew it, the whole experience was over.

Again, because hospice staff – volunteers and nurses and janitors and cooks – are all really, really special people who know how to handle these situations – I was not surprised at how well they took care of us. We accepted their compassion and took their direction, and when the funeral home came to collect my mother’s body, we thanked and hugged them all and left.

As the three of us were making our way towards the parking lot on this warm spring afternoon, a woman was walking towards us from her car. She was probably in her fifies with a bright purple sweater and a big quilted purse swinging from her arm. She looked right at me, came closer and without saying a word, she hugged me tight. Solid tight. And I tried to keep it together but couldn’t. When I finally finished ugly crying and caught my breath, she released me, smiled and continued on her way into the building.

I fished for the keys in my purse.

“Did you know her?” my brother asked.

“Not a clue” was my reply.

“Seriously? You haven’t seen her working here or something?” I think he was slightly appalled at my eager reception of affection from a stranger.

“Nope…” I said.

She was just a person in the right place at the right time who saw my utter brokenness and decided to do something about it. My hug from the universe.

I know we’ve all heard this before, but consider this a reminder. With all of the hatred in the world, now is the time to practice random acts of kindness. You certainly don’t have to hug a stranger if that’s not your thing, but try to throw some love out into the universe because it will always, always find a place to land. Say something kind, give someone that parking spot, offer to help another parent, or say “thank you” and “I’m sorry” like you really mean it. It’s your duty to fuel the universe with positive vibes, so get to it.