The Gift

Today is/was Buddha’s Birthday. I was going to spend it quietly, contemplatively, meditating, connecting with the Buddha within… Life had other plans. Instead I found myself unexpectedly in the waiting room of an eye doctor’s office waiting for my mother who was being examined for upcoming cataract surgery. Actually all of life it seems is about waiting at the moment, or is that waiting in the moment.

When I entered the waiting room this morning my mother had already arrived and was in with the doctor, having driven herself from the next town over. I noticed a very elderly woman seated in a lone chair up against a wall with a wheel chair next to her. Just as I took my seat she was trying to communicate in a very weak little voice with the receptionist behind a very high-walled counter. This little old lady was concerned because no one had come to pick her up yet. She somehow knew that someone should have been there by now. She knew she had been waiting too long. The sight of her sitting there all alone with no one there for her nearly brought me to tears. I felt my heart crack open – unexpectedly. Am thinking - Oh please, not NOW – not in the middle of the waiting room. Don’t crack open now! That would be too embarrassing – as the tears began to form.

Her doctor’s visit was evidently over and she had been waiting for what I assumed was her family to come and get her. I thought how odd that a family member hadn’t stayed with her. They had just left her to fend for herself. She wanted to know if the receptionist had called her family. The receptionist tried to explain over the counter top that she had called someone “a while ago”, but the wisp of a woman in the chair could not hear her. She wanted to know if the receptionist had called Jerry or Stacy. The receptionist responded dismissively with – “I called the number you gave me.” So I intervened. I don’t know why. It just felt like the thing to do at the time. Right place at the right time kind of thing. I went over to the woman and asked if she had another phone number for the someone else that she wanted called. (Thinking this is what the receptionist should have been doing). She mumbled something and then something else, and something else, which translated into that she couldn’t remember the other number.

I sat down. My heart began to burst open in my chest for this poor woman who was getting noticeably worried that no one was there to get her. I seem to know this feeling – the feeling of being abandoned, left alone to fend for myself, waiting for someone to come, not able to connect with anyone…. Oh dear – I can feel the heart cracking open again…

I tried to distract myself with reading ‘Radical Acceptance’ by Tara Brach. I opened to where the bookmark was and the first line I randomly read 2/3 down the page was: “…seeing and feeling the degree of suffering we are living with reconnects us to our heart.” It was another thud to the chest. And then I heard the receptionist making a phone call for the lone lady in the chair. Ah, she does care after all! I felt a little more relieved that action was being taken to help this poor, abandoned woman – as the receptionist spoke in a louder tone to let the woman know that somebody was indeed on the way, and it would only be another 5-10 mins… Whew – not abandoned after all – breathing better now.

And sure enough within 5 mins a woman from a “medical transport service” showed up to take this frail lady back to her nursing home. Wow – maybe she has no family after all, and no one had really abandoned her. She was just confused and suffered because she *thought* she had been abandoned. I felt her “suffering” and it touched something deep in me, reconnecting me to the Heart… I was touched by her need, her helplessness, her emotional distress. Responding to her need opened the Heart… Responding to life as it is in the moment opens the space for something larger than ourselves to move in us – to open...

I tried to read from Tara Brach’s book again, while I continued waiting in the waiting room, skimming through the chapter picking up other little phrases: “…opening to life as it is. …regardless of how our experience unfolds, by agreeing to what is here, we offer it the space to express and move through us”, which is exactly what happened this morning waiting in the waiting room. Life as it is moved through in a brief instant between me, an elderly woman and a receptionist. None of whom I expect to see again… Just breezes blowing through - opening the Heart… Happy Birthday Buddha! And thank you for the gift you left me today…

~*~