It is December. For many that means there is music everywhere with lyrics about angels singing about peace on earth, good will among mankind. Some people believe there are actual angels, God’s intermediaries with us (from the Greek angelos, messenger), other people like the idea of angels, and others, well, I don’t know what they think.
I was not thinking of angels last Thursday, when the alarm went off and I had to get up and take Tucket into Boston for his therapy dog shift. I was thinking of caffeine. But then, he began to whine when I picked up the canvas bag with our volunteer things in it and the tail went furiously when I said it was time to “go visiting.”
I was in a good mood by the time we met people in the garage and kids and adults said “Ooh, look at the dog” and people began to pet Tuck. It took awhile to navigate through the lobby, decorated with tastefully winter-themed, but not too religious, ornaments and streamers. The hospital has over 1000 beds and numerous outpatient clinics and treatment areas, and it seemed a lot of people were working there, visiting, or had an appointment. I had to steer Tucket carefully among the crowds, a task made harder by people changing directions to come greet him.
We have been visiting since this summer, and I have become accustomed to staff saying “hello, Tucket” when we get on an elevator or arrive at the nurses’ station on an inpatient floor. Last Thursday there were joyful visits, some tender visits, and a few with tears. Tucket is gentle and attentive with everyone, and he seems to know when to move from one person to another, whether it is from child to parent, from employee to employee, or person to person in one of the waiting areas. The doctors, nurses, and other staff in the pediatric intensive care unit love him, and he them. He turns right coming out of the elevator every time, waits for the automatic doors, and cruises straight to the center of the workstation, where staff greet him, rub his ears, and tell him how wonderful he is.
Last week he was tired after the ICU, and the elevator that came first was nearly full. I said we would wait for the next when the group said oh no, there was room. So they made room for us, and while the elevator went down to the lobby people petted him and asked his name, and slowly pressed against the walls of the elevator and each other so he would have “enough room” to breathe.
I watched staff, well dressed visitors, and a few tired people who may have been there for treatment do the improbable: press against people they didn’t know in a crowded elevator in a city hospital at the beginning of flu season, and there were no complaints. There were smiles everywhere, strangers smiling at one another, at my dog, at me.
And then I had my Christmas revelation. There are angels all around us. We just don’t see them most of the time. We are all messengers, and like the people last Thursday, we can carry a message of peace and good will. Indeed, we can carry it all year round, just like my gentle, love-hungry dog.
Elizabeth Coolidge-Stolz (c) 2010
No comments:
Post a Comment