TOUCH

The lucky ones live on the first floor. Down there at ground level, where the evidence of an impending bloom disturbs the winter worn soil of the flower beds under their windows. Their bodies are worn out and their souls are weary, but still they soldier on! For some of them, their brains have taken a left turn and they can’t seem to find their way home. Under the best of circumstances their lives are a daily struggle. 

There’s comfort in routine; sleep when it’s dark, dress when its light, eat when you’re fed. Their homes are in the past; their living room sets and their recipes and their shelves full of books. Decades of rich thick lives reduced to this: a single bed, perhaps an easy chair and a familiar quilt. And planted atop a single small dresser are silver framed photographs. I look around me now, here on the threshold of my own exit, and find comfort in the hope that, while I may lose all this “stuff” that swirls around me, what they cannot take away, when I am old, are the people I love.

In my almost weekly troubadour travels to retirement centers and nursing homes, I’ve repeatedly seen this scene unfold: We are singing songs of the past, and we are connected, happily reminiscing. But if someone comes to visit one of them, nothing else matters. The world around them melts away and the music stops and every molecule of their fragile being is magnetized to their visitor. Like a cotton dishcloth swept against a spill, they absorb the love that comes to visit, sucking it in with bright affection, looking around to see if everyone else notices that someone they love came to see THEM, and no one else. 

At the end of every gig, when the people I am singing to are healthy, I tuck my guitar into its case and one by one touch the skin of every person there. There is incredible power in touch, a magnetic force that awakens sleepy corners of our spirits. We need to touch. We crave connection, even if we are shy or introverted or scared. Tender touch, like oxygen breathed into yearning lungs.

So, when this wicked Coronavirus reared its head last month, sneaking across the ocean like the foggy Angel of Death that floated into households in the Ten Commandments movie, we took heed to protect our ancient treasures. Since the elderly are the most vulnerable, we decided we need to tuck them away. Like grandmother’s silverware, locked into a wooden box. All for love.

Her children come to see her through the window in her first-floor room, standing in their coats and gloves out in the cold. They unfold their lawn chairs and dial their phones, staring past their own reflections into their mother’s eyes. She raises her wrinkled hand to the window, pressing the palm flat on the glassy surface. Her daughter’s hand does the same, then her son, and her grandchildren try to sing as loud as they can, but the glass will not let it in loud enough for her murky ears to hear them. It helps, sure it helps, to try. It helps a lot. But still, when so much has been taken away, bit by bit at first, then in one fell swoop, it seems so unkind to rob them also of the one thing they could still afford to keep: touch.

Like the vaccination that makes the baby cry, we understand the why. But we hate the how. So, we pray, from our far-off places on the other side of the bedroom door and the hard glass window pane, that she will survive this, that she will sleep soundly until that day when she can once again press her heart against ours.