Reported by Robert R. Schwarz
Life for many of us, I've learned along with a few good friends, is like being in a school waiting anxiously for a diploma to enter heaven. Ask my wife and she'll grin and tell you I kept flunking several classes until age 88 when, seven months ago, by God's grace, I got that diploma; and Mary Alice and I moved into an assisted living facility. It's called HaborChase, and it's in Naperville, Illinois, an hour's drive westward from Chicago.
I'm writing this report--I say "report" only because I'm a well-weathered retired newspaper editor and former leadership development manager for Lions Cubs International. Also, it's my way of saying goodbye to people I love and would like to love.
Why a waiting room outside heaven? You'll understand after reading about the love and friendship , prayers and peace and beneficial suffering at HarborChase.
Last February morning I drifted into this room while standing outside HarborChase and waking up my mind by breathing in the chilly air and thanking God for creating the beautiful nature surrounding HarborChase with an acre of grass, shrubs, and early budding flowers and trees that entice my senses each morning.
Talking a few minutes ago with our new activities director, 33-year-old Kelli. I asked if she truly likes working here. "Sure do," she said. "I feel more welcomed here than any other place I've worked. It feels like home, like family."
At breakfast one morning I ask one of out servers, Catalina, the same question. "I feel better when I'm helping people, like when I work in the memory care unit." I wanted the opinion of my wife, Mary Alice; it said a lot, I thought. "I don't feel alone here, and my children are happy that I'm here."
Walk down a hallway at daytime or evening hour or brush elbows with a new resident at one of the daily activities and you'll be drawn into friendship or camaraderie by your exchange of a smile, a greeting or a pat on the back. Yes, there's one or two (maybe three) introverted grouches at HarborChase), but even these residents will eventually plant a smile on his or her face and utter a warm word . ( I am reminded of Mother Teresa's reply when asked what she thought was one of the most painful diseases on this planet: "Loneliness, " she replied. Years later, the U.S. Attorney Surgeon was quoted as being alarmed at the increased population of people--young and old--who suffered from sheer loneliness. ) Antidotes here for loneliness, I observed, are passionate bingo sessions after dinner, a church-like communal service on Wednesday afternoons, and monthly resident council meetings to hear complaints and fervid culinary suggestions for the kitchen staff.
In the recent HarboChase February newsletter, executive director Anne Heoeksema wrote, "It's the month dedicated to all things about LOVE." She added that each staff member at HarborChase "loves the residents like family. This month is also a great reminder that we should love our neighbor, ours spouse, our child, or our family." What makes Anne happy? She laughed and said . "Babies and puppies make me happy. Sometimes it is just living in the moment and being grateful for what’s there.”
I asked the director of resident care, Maria Gutierrez, how this unusual friendship between staff and resident developed. Maria explained that when Anne came here a little more than a year ago, she hired motivated, compassionate people who put their hearts into their work instead of just people who only wanted a job.
“Everyone here is allowed to age in place,” Maria said. “You are allowed to come and go as your please and eat as you like – all within reason. We have a bar and a deli, too!” Seeing others happy makes Maria happy, too. And when others are sad or lonely, so "am I", she said.
Mary Alice and I were at a Valentine dinner party here sitting with a resident senior citizen whose eyes seldom opened and whose mouth seldom uttered a word; when she did speak, it was a whisper only a person close to her could hear. Less than 20 feet away was the party entertainer singing the once Dean Martin hit, That's Amore (That's Love). When Dino sang out the song title, I gently squeezed this woman's arm. Each of us were smiling as we whispered in tune with others, "Amore."
I want very much to describe this room of mine outside heaven. But I don't know how. I do sense being very much alive in absolute peace and security and not aware of anything other than I was now existing totally in the Holy Trinity of God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. No thoughts, nothing. Though this sense of the Holy Trinity would last strongly for several minutes and only gradually fade away when my mind nudged me away from it with worldly thoughts. I shall praise God for these moments and surrender to His domain.
Let me tell you what I believe led God to bless me with this waiting room just outside heaven...
While exercising alone in the gym soon after my arrival at HarborChase, I tripped and broke my left hip. During my ambulance drive to the hospital, I prayed to God that my severe pain would not be "wasted" , that it would serve some meaningful purpose... I hoped that a somewhat self-centered prayer might be an antidote. Later, knowing that only God, knowing my nature and low- pain threshold, could have orchestrated this.
Before I got to the emergency room , I was certain my life's purpose in surviving this ordeal was to help--however pitifully I could--simply be a helping friend to my fellow residents at HarborChase. I was suddenly made joyful by an instantaneous thought, that for the first time in my life I had a God-given, bona fide purpose in my life. It was to often praise Him for this , saying ,yes, yes, yes to His rule.
At age 88, I was to have a new life! The joy and overpowering sense of liberation went beyond what I felt on that August day in 1950 when an Austrian soldier and his guard dog walked me to freedom from a maximum prison in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia . I had spent 10 days in a cell fearing I would soon be sent to a gulag prison camp in Siberia. . I had been arrested at bayonet point for "illegally" crossing the Czech border in a deserted countryside to take a photo of a junked World War II Russian tank trap. I, then a journalist, had left my passport in the car with my with fiancee who, thank God, drove back to Vienna and enlisted the aid of a U.S. embassy official . My parents , Walter and Dorothy Schwarz, would later get a letter from Allyn C. Donald , director of Special Consular Services at the U.S. State Dept.that my arrest [actually a capture] had "been blatant entrapment."
Sleep evaded me that night due to the nagging of my now-wired hip and the doubt of my capability to help to people I didn't know...and would my new human newness enable me to love them without looking for a payback? I was also disturbed by the question: really, was I the least bit qualified to take on this mission? Much of my life belied my qualifications. I recalled those early decades of all kinds of delinquent , immoral behavior followed by more years of ego-driven work as an award winning newspaper editor with vain wanderings --when my spare time and wife allowed it--into the realm of metaphysics and other searches for absolute truism about being human. I soon developed a two-sided, cafeteria style belief in Christianity from reading celebrated Christian authors and attending churches of different denominations, yet always leaving room for my flesh and a fat wallet.
After a week in a rehab center for my hip I joined my wife at the HarborChase assisted living facility in Naperville, Illinois. To my dismay, I soon saw that there was no need here for an extra good Samaritan here for me to help people cope with pain; a dedicated staff had that mission. My challenge in life, for now, was to be firm and steadfast through charitable conversations with memory-loss victims and with my minor health issues and the awesome, discomforting true but gladly-accepted realization that I no longer was in full control of my life as I had been for many years. But, I was motivated to "stick it out" by a lyric I remembered from my disciplined U.S. Army days in boot-camp: You're in the Army Now ...!
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful,
to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make
some
difference that you have lived and lived well.”
― Ralph
Waldo Emerson
More Stuff about HarborChase
On most weekday afternoons between 2 and 3 O'clock, the busiest place at HarborChase is its front lounge which faces the front door. It's often filled maybe 30 very alive residents with yak-yak and other clamor, whispered gossip, recorded popular music, a card game with a man and three women , a nurse or two crossing the floor pushing a cart of meds to other rooms , a resident complaining to the very patient executive director about some minor nocturnal disturbance (like a too- loud radio in a nearby room) or complimenting her on her choice of lounge furniture. Then there is the new activity director, Kelli , trying her best on certain days to help set up for the arriving professional musical entertainers. HarborChase now has 80 residents and another estimated 25 in its memory care unit.
The heroine at the concierge desk here near the front door is Nancy. Bored after three years of recent retirement , Nancy came to HarborChase and never since has she eased away from being a friend to any resident that paused at her desk; she never tired of engaging in "serious" small talk with aged and very aged residents—some in their second century of life--nor yawned while with a care- giver or any staff member needing long answers to questions which seemingly only Nancy could answer.
On any given hour of her shift, you’ll hear Nancy often speak like a sympathetic family member in give-and-take conversations with questions like how is so-and-so doing in the hospital? Where can I buy this ? My grandchildren might visit me today; they might be nervous about this, so be nice. Can someone tell the chef not to put cheese on everything? And then there is the weather and detail information about the day’s activities which residents prod Nancy to give them. . Of course, questions from residents in the memory care unit often challenge her... It seems that Nancy loves people, for she to told me, "I love giving to people."
Onward to the Gym and Other Fun Stuff
Some of the most intense display of friendship--and sometimes love--takes place Monday thru Friday in the gym during occupational and physical therapy sessions . At work is a cadre of five or six therapists, two with PhD degrees . It is a room full of males and females, widows and widowers with an endless list of physical and sometimes serious mental handicaps doing what you might see for some is impossible for their bodies. I marvel three times a week at the scene of seven or eight hard-breathing patients surrounding their bodies to hand-bars, treadmills, and foot-obstacle courses on the floor--with their trainer's constant pep talk like, "Great job! Perfect! You got it, Bill !"--and finally, " Take a rest, Care for some water?" I am riveted to the unending displays of friendship, joking, and semi-serious conversations ,say, between three trainers at work with a patient in different parts of the gym while simultaneously following the strict order of their patient's prescribed exercise.
Slices of Life in our Dining Room
One of the most joyful birthdays of my adult life occurred shortly after 7:30 a.m. in the dining room as I finished my eggs-over-easy with hash-brown potatoes and cinnamon bread toast and was once more reading my birthday card from Mary Alice, a life-time artist and art teacher. Besides her love message inside, she had painted a flower on the cover. Quickly, several of the staff servers for the room’s more than 25 tables, each seating 4 residents, rushed across the room and stood by our table and sang "Happy Birthday, Robert." I managed a child-like smile of embarrassment and gratitude.
After the birthday chorus, my eyes wandered over to a table where an 82- year old mother was spoon- feeding her 44- year old invalid daughter who had suffered from brain damage since age four; her physician had accidentally injected her with a dangerous overdose of a potent medicine. She could neither speak nor understand a word spoken to her. Most meals had found me and the girl taking a moment of acknowledging each other, with the two of us exchanging a repeated waving of arms. If she had slept well the night before, she would muster up enough energy to smile at me and slowly bring her hands together and manage a feeble but earnest clapping.
The first time our 99-year-old table mate, Helen, witnessed this, she said, “It’s worth being very old when my great grandchildren hug me around the neck.” Sitting next to Helen is Betty, a two- year resident and avid conversationalist; Betty once remarked to me with a grin, “I’ll probably be living here until the end, but I’m fortunate enough to be living here.” Betty had worked for a law firm as an administrative assistant for 39 years.
The dining room is pleasant looking, calm and serene despite the chorus of sounds coming from casual chatter and the hustle and bustle of servers who are constantly rushing back and forth to keep up with residents' frequent requests for meal and dessert substitutes, some dishes neither appearing on the two-meal nor the ala carte menu. {?????? The servers address the residents by first name and never fail to be genuinely friendly, not expecting any tip ( for there is no meal tipping at HarborChase).
I suggested to Mary Alice if she ever wanted to do a mural oil painting that captured the full humanity of HarborChase--its struggles and joys--it should be of this dinning room at any meal time. Let me show you some of this humanity (using other names )...
* I'm looking at Billy, who returned from the hospital last night minus both legs.
* I see very hard-of-hearing Harvey, so frustrated trying to converse with a very old table mate, also frustrated trying to express his thoughts to Billy.
* There's a veteran with post-traumatic stress syndrome attempting to navigate a way to his table.
* And retired international corporate executive , James , seemingly unsatisfied with life , especially today--because he again is sitting alone.
* And a grandmother, never fully enjoying full comfort here due to replacements of both knees, shoulders and a hip.
* I also see former musician Peter, who does his best to remember all the notes of songs he plays on the piano here after dinner.
* There are three residents with serious memory problems, yet their sense of humor of humor often brings joyful grins to many here.
* Two residents have oxygen tanks strapped to them.
* Several of the diners mentioned have come to their table in wheelchairs or walkers.
* At least two residents struggle to speak English.
* And me, Bob Schwarz? Well...he's trying hard to keep focused on simple priorities, learning to remember first names of people he daily interacts with, and struggling to forsake his afternoon cat naps.
Yet despite all of the above, every time I have been at a lunch with a prolonged applause for a children's choir or at a dinner hour listening to stage-like singers or equally professional musicians, Y the room's smiling faces assure me that this hour or two has gladden many hearts and pulled all us closer to each other.
A Final Note to You, Dear Reader
As for me, each night before I pull that blanket over my head I thank the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit for giving me my Life Purpose at age 89-- before calling me Home. He has spared me many of life torments I clearly deserved. For me, He has been Way, the Truth, and the Life.
I don't know Dear Reader how to end this "report" or what else you' might like to read about my Heaven. My blog is ExodusTrekkers.blogspot.com. I must say, however, that I will pray that what you have read will, in some small way, help your pilgrim trek through life. Know your life's purpose, my friend, and let it spill over to others.
The End
Next Week : ???
comments welcomed
rrschwarz777@gmail.com
© 2018, 2022, 2023 Robert R. Schwarz
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