Healing Hands

We attended a fundraiser the other night for my school. While there we took a few minutes to go by, greet, and pay our respects to the president of the university and his wife. Both have had a go of it medically in the past few years. They are, as we say in the business, “an old eighty.”

When my wife stooped over to greet Mrs. P sitting there at the table in her wheel chair, Mrs. P gripped her hand and semed to just not let go. Not even speaking. Just sitting and keeping hold of her hand.

Later Tam commented on her behavior and she wondered why. I’ve seen it before. I see it every now and then. Almost always it’s an elderly woman. Almost always it’s a woman in failing health. I’ve experienced it with a man a time or two, but it's less common.

Thinking about it later I had to wonder if it’s touch. Nothing more, nothing less. Just to touch, to connect with a vibrant human, a person showing concern for the failing individual. Is it fear? Is it a recollection of youth? Is it the simple comfort of touch? Having experienced it more than a time or two I’d have to say it’s all of that: It’s the reassurance of connection. It’s the comfort of touch. It’s the calming of companionship. Rarely do they seem to want let go. Letting go and walking away I always feel a little guilty-- that I'm cheating them of something important, robbing them of a well deserved pleasure, cutting short a last indulgence.

I say all that and yet I don’t know. But if you see it, if you experience it, if you ever give your hand to that person who has come face to face with the unyielding, impassionate terminal chapter in their life, or the overwhelming cloud of serious illness, you’ll know. And you’ll feel it. Whatever it means, you’ll walk away thinking about nothing else but that moment. And I'm certain of this: In that moment you've provided peace and healing, even if there is no recovery to come.