How to dance in the rain

New Year’s Greetings!

We need to share our inspiring stories. This one, recounted by a nurse, happened at a busy clinic at 8:30 one morning. An elderly gentleman in his 80’s arrived to have stitches removed from his hand and said he was in hurry because he had another appointment at 9 o’clock.

While attending to the various steps in any medical visit, the nurse noticed that he kept looking at his watch. When she asked him if had another doctor’s appointment, he answered, “No, but I need to go to the nursing home to eat breakfast with my wife.”

When the nurse inquired about her health, the gentleman replied that she had Alzheimer’s, and he always went over first thing every morning to be with her. She asked if his wife would be upset if he was a bit late. “No, she probably wouldn’t be, because she hasn’t recognized me for several years.”

Surprised, the nurse asked, “And you still go every morning even though she doesn’t know who you are?”

He smiled, patted the nurse’s hand, and replied, ”She doesn’t know me, but I still know who she is.”

The nurse, holding back tears as he left, thought to herself, ‘That is the kind of love I want in my life.’

This kind of love accepts everything that life brings, including the ravages of dementia or any severely debilitating illness. It’s far beyond ordinary concepts about what love is. As the saying goes: the happiest people don’t necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the best of everything they have. Or to put it another way, ‘life isn’t about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain.’

Blessings,

Olivia

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