She caught my eye as I walked through the lobby of an assisted-living facility after visiting a friend. I had seen her before, always sitting in the same Victorian high-back chair against the wall, with her walker parked in front of her and a Penn State key ring draped around her neck. She wore slacks and a pastel sweater, her short gray hair framing her face with soft bangs that curled under just a bit.

She held up what looked like a narrow-lipped bowl made of sunny yellow yarn. An unraveling ball of yarn and two knitting needles sat in her lap.

“I don’t know what this is supposed to be,” she said, smiling at me. I couldn’t tell if her eyes were pleading or dancing. I stopped in midstride and returned her smile. She looked down and turned it over in her hands, inspecting it from all angles, shaking her head.

“I think it was supposed to be a hat, when I started,” she continued, puzzled by her own creation. “But do you know any heads this would fit on?”

We smiled at each other.

“Hmm,” I said. “It does kind of look like a beret, but you’re right – you’ll need to find a pretty small head for it at this point. Do you have any granddaughters who have dolls?”

“I was thinking maybe I could just keep going and make it into a little throw pillow,” she said, pretending to toss it like a Frisbee across the room. I smiled wider.

“Or you could knit a handle across the top and make it into a cute little basket,” I offered. She looked at it again, this time with wonder, happy to have options. Then she looked back at me.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“My name is Robyn.”

“Robby?”

“Ro-byn,” I said, slower and louder.

“Robby, that is an unusual name for a girl,” she said.

“No, RAH-BIN,” I said. “Like the bird.” A dawning of recognition crossed her face.

“Ahhh Robyn. I see.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Kathleen.”

“Ohhh, what a beautiful name,” I said. “One of my favorite songs is called ‘Kathleen.’”

“Uh-huh. ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen’?” she said dismissively, looking back down at her fuzzy yellow mystery.

“No, it’s just called ‘Kathleen,’” I said. She raised her head, her interest piqued. “It’s by a singer named Josh Ritter.”

“Huh. I don’t know that one.”

“I bet you’d like it. You know what the first line is?”

She sat up straighter, shook her head. I leaned over and spoke directly in her ear. “‘All the other girls here are stars, you are the Northern Lights, Kathleen.’”

I drew back and watched the teenager within her blush and inhale. “Oh my, really,” she stammered. “I’ve never heard that one!”

“Would you like to hear it?” I asked, pulling my phone out of my coat pocket. She looked at me like I was a mirage.

“Well, yes! I would love to hear it,” she said. I scrolled through my iPhone’s music library until I found it. Josh began strumming his guitar and I glanced around the lobby before clicking the volume up as loud as it would go. I held the tiny music player in front of her, wishing it was attached to speakers that would fill the room.

“All the other girls here are stars, you are the Northern Lights…”

She looked up at me with dazzled eyes, then quickly back down when she heard his voice again.

“They try to shine in through your curtain — you’re too close and too bright…”

“Oh my goodness,” she whispered, intently focused.

“They try and they try, but everything that they do is the ghost of a trace of a pale imitation of you….

I’ll be the one to drive you back home, Kathleen….”

We listened and smiled and she stared at the phone in my hand as I leaned over her and wondered who might be singing to her in her mind.

“I know you are waiting and I know that it is not for me

But I’m here and I’m ready and I’ve saved you the passenger seat…”

An old man wandered into the lobby and stood watching us. I tried hard not to sing the words out loud like I usually do.

“Every heart is a package tangled up in knots someone else tied

I’ll be the one to drive you back home, Kathleen….”

When the last lyric was sung I clicked off the phone as she began rummaging around in the purse hanging from her walker.

“I will have to tell my son about that one,” she said. “I wish I had paper here, I could write it down.”

I walked to the sign-in desk and fetched a scrap of paper. In the same carefully neat, extra big penmanship I use to write lunch notes to my kindergartner, I wrote:

“‘Kathleen’ by Josh Ritter.” Below that, just for fun, I added:

“All the other girls here are stars, you are the Northern Lights.”

I handed it to her and she read it over, then folded it and put it in her purse.

“Thank you, dear,” she said. “You have a lovely, lovely day.”

“Oh I am,” I said, turning to go. The front doors parted and I walked toward the rest of my sunny Saturday, seeing stars.

POSTSCRIPT: This first conversation evolved into a friendship that lasted nearly two years. I visited Kathleen often and we shared hours of quiet conversation and laughter as well as tender moments of “Why am I still here?” melancholy reflection. She died peacefully on Dec. 24, 2016, just days after the hospice agency I volunteer for had sent me an email asking if I’d begin visiting a new patient who had just signed up for our services. I laughed when I saw her name in that email, and told my supervisor that someone way above his pay grade had assigned her to me long ago. Miss you, my friend.

 

[This post was written as part of the 1000 Voices For Compassion initiative, which involves more than 1,000 bloggers, including myself, flooding the Internet with stories of compassion. Because yes, more of that, please.]