Sometimes in the act of trying to show just a grain of kindness to someone we receive back a lot more than we ever intended to give. Let me explain. My 86 year old mother-in-law had a stroke about 3 weeks ago and has now been transferred to The Hildebrand Clinic in Brissago Switzerland where she will be doing therapy for between one and two months. The Hildebrand Clinic provides treatment to stroke and cranial trauma victims, as well as Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis sufferers. While this modern 105 bed facility is in a fabulous location a visitor cannot help but be taken aback by the suffering seen as you pass by and interact with patients being pushed along in wheel chairs or hobbling around using walkers and crutches. Most of the patients were much younger than my mother-in-law with many being in the 20-60 age bracket. How quickly life can change for any of us!
Lesson: appreciate every day and the measure of health that you have.
This is a view from the clinic looking out on the lake. Quite the facility compared to many I've seen.
This past Saturday while visiting my mother-in-law with my wife and my son we sat in the clinic's cafeteria and I watched as a middle-aged man was wheeled in by a nurse and was then left to sit all alone. Just as the nurse turned to leave she said to the man in broken English that she would come in about an hour to take him back to his room. She then turned to the waiter and said to him in Italian "if I don't bring him down he just lays in bed all day!" How sad I thought to myself. I then observed him for a few moments as he tried to do something on his cell phone using a body that wouldn't or couldn't co-operate. His arms would flail and his head would roll and jerk back uncontrollably. I really felt compelled to go over and talk to him and try and express some human kindness....... and so I did.
He told me that his name was Mark, he'd been there for 5 months already and that he had no family in Switzerland. "Does anyone visit you?" I said. "No", he said still managing a smile. "Did you have stroke?" I asked. "Yes and I also suffer from multiple sclerosis" he replied. I'm telling you, this guy was in a pitiful state. He was confined to a wheelchair, his speach was barely comprehensible and he had a bag strapped to his leg to collect the urine from his catheter. All of that and yet he was very friendly and quite witty. "I'll be coming here a few times a week for the next month." I told him. "Would you like me to visit you?" I added. "Yes I'd love that he said!"
Yesterday I went up to his room for a visit and two nurses that I found outside the door to his room said that he had been taken for lunch and that afterword they'd leave him down in the cafeteria to sit for a while. They told me that they were so happy that I'd come to visit him since no one else ever showed up. After finding him downs stairs we had a nice conversation and I learned that he was born in 1955, was from Boston, had lived many years in Europe, was a graduate arts student and had worked for many years in the advertising industry. He was alone because his wife had died 10 years ago and his two children lived abroad. He had also, until recently, been working on the interface for "Minder Over Matter" on the apple platform. Here is part of what he wrote on his website which I believe says a lot about him:
“Everyone is impaired at one time or another in their lives. We are born with the same problems of learning how to do the simplest of things (or so we thought) like walk, talk, recognize places, things and people or places, tie your own shoe, and so forth. When one gets to a certain age it happens again!…. your impaired. M.O.Morg stands for Mind Over Matter and is a tribute to Mark’s own mother, Phyllis Ann Kremer Serianni, who was the American honorary Ambassador for Ticino and President of the American Women’s Club worldwide. In her role, she played ‘mom’ to many many people all over the world. So its Mom (rather than Dad), because Mom helps. Mom is the person one calls for when dis-eased, impaired, sick or when one has an accident. For example, they (moms) get you wheelchairs and other means of help! Help not in a metaphysical way but in a physical way. Lets take the word ‘metaphysical’, meta, from Greek, meaning ’beyond’ or ‘after’ and then physical. One can’t do much with the ‘meta’ part, but with the physical part one can. MOMorg sets out to help the physically/mentally impaired to communicate better, because a person, who is impaired is not dead. They still have their thoughts, their dreams, still have tremendous ideas. Thoughts and ideas, that they might want to share.”
I don’t know how far he got or will get with that project but it sure told me a lot about how he feels, his passions! Part of the most widely translated and distributed speech ever written says that "there is more happiness in giving than in receiving". In this case all I did was give a few minutes of my time. It made me happy and enriched me. I hope that it helped him too and I look forward to visiting him again soon. Maybe I can learn more lessons from Mark, maybe I’ve made a friend.
Lesson Learned: If we reach out and show a little kindness to someone in need it can bring both parties joy and who knows what we'll learn.
Let's keep showing kindness even in our posts and comments here. We can't help but benefit! Till next time @kus-knee