The hospital
I have never liked hospitals. Hospitals
can so often seem to be places where we attempt to sequester the pain
and confusion and despair that are a part of so many lives—to keep them
out of sight and out of mind. When we go to the hospital, we look in a
mirror and we see ourselves in 5, 10, 20, 50 years—it doesn’t really
matter how long. The question isn’t if but when we will take our place
amongst all of these broken down worn out decaying bodies.
How do we live and move inside these
places? How do we pretend to have normal conversations about weather and
sports and church and children’s activities alongside a wild-eyed woman
stumbling around with her dressing gown wide open, or a sad-faced old
man who keeps wandering around blankly, pushing his walker into chairs?
How do we visit when the woman next to us is sobbing confusedly as she
coughs down her sixth pill of the morning? How can we speak of things
like eternity and suffering and salvation over the din of mindless
television programs blaring to occupy these fading treasures of glorious
humanity, these flickering lights? How do we pray and talk and laugh
and speak of life in these halls of death? What good could possibly come
of our feeble attempts to wrest order out of all this chaos?
I get back into my car after my hospital
visit and the man on the radio is interviewing a physicist from Oxford.
They’re talking about quantum physics, relativity, and the “undeniable”
existence of multiple universes parallel to our own. In another
universe, right now, I am having completely different experiences than
the “me” that I think is exclusively real is currently having. Maybe I’m
riding a scooter or a horse. Maybe I’m skydiving or planting a garden.
Maybe I’ve taken up smoking.