Amended….
I heard this song while riding my bike. This sounds like what I felt that evening in the twilight as surgery awaits me in the morning…I can still feel Him near especially when I Breathe in His Spirit…
GRATEFUL…
“It is always shocking to meet Life where we thought we were alone.” George MacDonald
This is a very short story about a vivid memory from decades ago…
There are some memories so imbedded in our core that they shape who we are. Those may be memories of people who have touched us in the deepest ways or like in this case a moment when the Truth was more evident than the physical surroundings and happenings. This particular moment is as real now as it was decades ago.
Alone in a private room in the Hope Haven Children’s Hospital without food or water awaiting surgery in the morning. Fear was there of course but it the aloneness that brought on the despair. In those days visiting hours were strictly enforced so Mom and Dad had left. At age 8 to 12 years old there is not much history to fall back on for support. It was a desperately lonesome place as the sun began to set. Waiting like this is difficult. Waiting will always be difficult.
This could have been the fifth or it could have been the eighth surgery. I am not sure which one of my surgeries this was since the memory of them all merge together. It was I believe the first in a private room. The year before in this same hospital just down the hall in the boy’s ward something happened that in hindsight so affected my Mom that all future surgeries would put me in a private or semi-private room. The previous year the night before my surgery a little boy was brought to the boy’s ward who was burned from head to toe. Apparently a large cardboard box that was being burned as trash in a new housing development was lifted by the wind. Then the flaming box landed on top of the little boy catching his clothes on fire too. He was burned beyond hope. While his parents who must have been devastated left for a while, my Mom held the boy and sang to him as the McGuire Sisters performed on the Ed Sullivan Show. The song they sang was ‘Sugartime’. What a vivid image it was of Mom holding the boy in her lap in front of the television. I will never forget my mom loving on that poor boy! It must have brought back painful memories of my being burned.
Hospital wards were a fraternal society filled with others who faced the same fears and challenges. The boys and girls wards were separated in Hope Haven Hospital by a wall with the nurses’ station at the head of the partition. While at Duke University Hospital the two wards where at opposite ends of a hall. After surgery visiting the girl’s ward was a great wheelchair adventure. The nurses frowned on such adventures but the lure was compelling. So this was the first night by myself awaiting surgery. Earlier that day I had been prepped for surgery. Now was the time of waiting. Alone.
As usual before all surgeries that afternoon my leg was prepared for surgery. The leg was first shaved from groin to toes. Then disinfected with various solutions the last of which was iodine based which left the leg a red color. After the disinfecting a sterile stocking covered the leg from hip to foot. This was not uncomfortable but gave a feeling of making the leg seem almost separate from the body. So now the duty was to stay still, leave the leg alone then just wait. Soon the nurse would bring a medicine that would put me to sleep. Mom and Dad had bought a radio to place on the nightstand beside the bed to help fill the time of waiting. That night an opera program was on so that helped take my mind to a different place. Music can do that for us.
Lying there waiting at some point before being sedated, looking out the window into the pine trees several yard away, my eyes were drawn to the white wall that was adjacent to the window. Straight out the wall reached almost to the pine trees. Whether it was my prayer or someone else’s the wall with it’s whiteness, brightness and heat engulfed the room where I lay. The Light with its pleasant warmth gave me a peace and serenity that is beyond description. The Lord was there. The fear and loneliness had left. That is the last that I remember of that night and that surgery.
That moment of total Peace and Comfort was indelibly written on my heart and soul. It was decades later that the reality of that moment became clear to me. The Lord was present so I was not afraid. I was not alone…
This photo is from the internet and not mine…
For more on ‘my burn’ see: https://www.dksmith918.com/?page_id=1205
“The Accident: God is with me”