Honoring the Moment: Poetic Inspiration Found Within An Adult Day Center

 
I was captivated by two scenes which occurred on the same day and at the same time at The Bridge last week. Two women, independent of each other, decided to sit out from the group activities and simply do what they felt called to in that moment. I walked from one to the other, not imposing myself on them, and simply bore witness to their grace and their insight. I witnessed the poetry of stillness. The poetry of contentment.

Sitting at my desk in the back room, I heard the first woman sit down in a chair placed directly in front of a large window.  The window provides a clear view of Gastineau Channel and of snow covered mountains. Another senior walked up to her and asked if she was alright. Her answer touched me. I rose from my seat to view her profile. She was calm and quiet. She stared out the window. Her breath recalled a softly spoken prayer.

Another senior asked her the same question as the first and her answer was the same:

"I'm just sitting here grieving."

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I walked into the next room, still contemplating this woman's ability to carve out of the day a space for her to grieve the loss of loved ones, and came across another scene of serene beauty. A second woman sat alone at a table having declined an invitation from a fellow staff member to join 3 or 4 other seniors playing cards.

There, amongst the movement and the conversation of others, she sat writing out notes on her reading. She is in her 90's and still has beautiful handwriting. I watched her hand move across the page and remembered the hand of so many children writing their first words. I thought of my own diaries at home and how each carries the weight of my history. I thought, too, of how many times I used the phrase "muscular memory" in regards to how the physical body records and learns motions and movements.

Here, now, I witnessed it serving her. She, who's memories have faded and are no longer linear in terms of what we think of as a time line, held her pen and moved it across the lined page with the ease that dragonflies etch still water. This was comfort. This was her present in a way that made my own heart tremble as I thought to myself, "Praise small acts, for these are the acts that will humble you."

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And now T.S. Eliot comes to mind - 

….I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away—  
T. S. Elliot,  from The Four Quartets:  East Coker