I frantically searched my mind, trying to decode what he was doing and then it hit me…he was using sign language that means “I love you.”
During one of my shifts last week, I made my way to see a patient who had specifically requested for a chaplain to come by. I meandered through the ICU and quickly grabbed a few details about the patient from the nurse before heading to his room.
I quietly knocked on the door and was somberly greeted by a relative of the patient. A man whose swollen eyes and quivering lip acknowledged the severity of where I was about to enter. He took me to the patient’s bedside and laying there was a man whose frail body had overwhelmingly been ravaged by disease. I quietly introduced myself and began talking with him while the gentleman who greeted me slipped out. At first, the patient tried to speak, projecting a combination of guttural sounds and labored, wheezing breaths. He stopped and instead struggled to raise his emaciated, pale hand to me. As my hand intersected his, he grasped it with quivering strength and allowed our now joined hands to fall back on the light blue blanket of his bed. He closed his eyes and I felt his arm relax. We sat there for a few moments in silence, only hearing voices outside his door and the occasional noises of the equipment attached to him.
After a while, he slowly looked over at me and tried to speak again in vain without letting go of my hand. Surmising I still didn’t understand, he removed his hand from mine and began gingerly moving it in distended patterns…motions that caused his face to grimace in pain. I frantically searched my mind, trying to decode what he was doing and then it hit me…he was using sign language that means “I love you.” I repeated the phrase out loud and asked him if that was what he was trying to tell me. With strained voice, he mouthed, “yes.” The power of this stranger’s unexpected sentiment left me stunned and speechless. He then reached out to me again. This time, I surrounded his hand with both of mine and sat back down, holding it tightly as his breathing began to slow down again. He was exhausted from his beautiful display of affection.
While sitting with him, I spoke to him about the journey he was traveling, quietly declaring my sorrow for his suffering and my respect for his precious yet unfamiliar life. I asked him if he had ever given his life to the Lord to which he nodded and mouthed “yes.” Our hands still joined, I proclaimed the beauty and wonder of Heaven to him and how the imminent end of his earthly journey would be the beginning of his heavenly one with no more suffering and pain. His peaceful, darkened eyes looked at me as though locked onto every word I spoke. When I ran out of words, I prayed a simple prayer over him and over his family. Then silence again.
Regrettably, I had to leave his side for another commitment in the hospital, but I told him I would come back as soon as I could to sit with him again. As I let go of his hand, he slowly used it for a different pattern…sign language for “thank you.”
I walked out of the room. With each step, I felt tears well up in my eyes and a deepening sense of pain in my heart for a man I had only met a short time before. I silently prayed I would get to see him again before he went Home.
After about half an hour, I made my way back to his room, but this time, I laid eyes on a man who was unresponsive and dying alone in the dimly lit room. His sporadic, shallow breaths were the only indication that life remained in him. His vitals had deteriorated in my absence and it was evident his body was shutting down. I sat with him and held his hand without a word until my shift ended.
The next morning he was gone, leaving me with only memories of the few, but precious moments this stranger and I shared. Those memories will forever be etched in my heart. But even as I grieve, my heart knows we’ll meet again someday under much different circumstances. So long, my new friend. Thank you for blessing me more than you’ll ever know.
Landon <><
Photo Credit: Tom Pumford via unsplash.com
