Proof of Heaven

Even at 50 years of age, my default approach upon meeting an elderly person assumes s/he cannot contribute equally to me in cognitive depth, wit or speed. I am in my prime and life has passed them by. In another words, an elderly person cannot keep up. Like all prejudices, I am guilty of committing them even before I can consciously rebel against my stereotypes. These are just some of my assumptions about old people: can't hear, can't see, slower to process information or respond to it, dismissive of current popular culture, physically slow, and disagreeing with them means disrespect. They are the fragile, precious vase you put on a pedestal and treat with care or you might break it. I fight these prejudices but I have not conquered them.

Just the other day at a luncheon, I sat next to a gentleman in his 80's. The forty pounds plus he had lost a year ago when he had nearly died remained absent from his frame. His suspenders drooped over his shoulders like the the slender branches of a weeping willow. He is frail by any measure and he is old. I've known him tangentially for a few years in what I call an "across the room" friendship; I know something of his past, I cheer his successes, and speak my sorrow for his trials, but beyond this, I have the thinnest of connections. Like the vase, I have politely but dismissively regarded him from afar.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in what happens after death. Well-written, intriguing and impossible to put down.

So of course, he surprised me. Acknowledging my work as a chaplain, he wanted to know if I had read Heaven is Real about a 4 year old and his near death experience. While my mouth said, "Why, yes," my inner monologue mused (Who hasn't. It's on every bookshelf in every grocery store in the Bible Belt South.) He went on about Raymond Moody, (probably remembered him from the 1960's and nothing new there); some evangelical NDE book called 40 Minutes in Heaven, (yeah, yeah, I've got to get to a meeting); some author on Oprah, (does she even have a tv show anymore?); and was I going to read Eben Alexander's book, Proof of Heaven. (Now this is interesting! Alexander is for the intelligent and college-educated person who follows Near Death research. April, you clever girl, please delight this gentleman with information he doesn't know so you can be important to him.) 

"Absolutely," I said. "It's the most important work on NDE's in a generation and I first read about it on a website (IANDS and you couldn't possibly know anything about it, the inner monologue added in my brain) I believe you will find interesting . . . ."

"IANDS," he said. "The International Association of Near Death Studies," and then he summarized their research and the conferences he had been to over the last several years.

(Silence-                                )The inner monologue was gone. It had probably gone off for a pretentious cappuccino and it had left me with the least erudite and smallest of words.

"Oh," was all I could muster. Now I really wanted to leave. What a fool I had been and if I stayed any longer, he might realize it; but there was no escape because the older gentleman slapped me across the face while God grabbed my narcissistic heart and squeezed it like a stress ball until the beat pounded in my ears and I listened.

"I am old," he said. "I don't have long and I wonder about my death." With his x-ray vision parading as blue eyes, he stared right through me and I could hear his thoughts: What will become of me? What happens next?

I put my hand on his shoulder and shared with him not what I believe, but what I know after having sat at the bedside of countless dying children, adults and the elderly -- hearing their stories and witnessing their passing: a journey awaits us.

He sighed contentedly and his face slackened. Why hadn't I noticed he'd been so tense before? Stupid Question.

I am always astonished and even outraged God forced on me the awesome and frightening responsibility of  working in hospice. I will never understand the wisdom behind God's choice. Me, the self-righteous, condescending, so superior, blaspheming, love using the f-bomb for maximum damage, ingrate. Shame does well to turn my heart.