David isn’t mentally or physically agile enough to play Bingo anymore, but he still likes to be wheeled downstairs to sit among the action and keep an eye on a couple cards.
I had told my friend David I loved him many times before, usually while hugging him goodbye after a visit. He always hugged me back but never responded to my words, just continued to quietly moan in pain while watching the movie I’d started for him. Sometimes he’d be drifting off to sleep, and I’d whisper it as I kissed the top of his head on my way out the door of his room.
Yesterday, though, I wanted to make sure the message was clearly delivered. I am watching my sweet friend go downhill, and I fear time is becoming short. He has been subtly declining since I met him, but it’s more apparent now. It is the nature of Juvenile Huntington’s disease, and I knew it would happen. Still, it’s heartwrenching to watch. A hospice nurse showed up today, said she was just assigned to make daily visits. I used to be a hospice volunteer, and I know the implication behind receiving those services.
After an unsuccessful go at Bingo downstairs, David and I sat in his room watching a movie while I held his hand and stroked his arm and thought about what he has given me in the year I’ve known him. Perspective. Friendship. Strength. Appreciation. Laughter. Peace. Purpose.
When I got up to leave I asked if I could pray with him. He usually grunts “uhh” for “yes,” but today he reached up his arms for a hug instead. I leaned over his wheelchair and wrapped my arms around his bony shoulders. When I pulled back I stayed crouched at his eye level and waited for his gaze to meet mine. Instead his attention moved from the TV to his flailing, aching legs, over which he has very little control. He moaned and gripped his wheelchair.
“David,” I said, waiting patiently. He looked up at me, his eyes widening as he tried to focus.
“I love you.” I just needed him to see me say it. I wanted it to register in his heart, the simple fact that he matters to me. That he matters, period. I wanted our mostly wordless friendship to have something, a definition of itself, on the record.
His eyes got wider and his mouth opened immediately, emotions from the person trapped inside bubbling up, past muscles that have been stifled by disease, past a mind dulled by medication, past a mouth missing all its teeth.
“Ahh…ooh…oohh” came the sounds through his perfectly rounded mouth in the sweetest, most unexpected God-given moment of our friendship. “I love you too,” his eyes said to me, clear as day.
Turns out he wanted something on the record, too.
“Treasure each other in the recognition that we do not know how long we shall have each other.”
Joshua Liebman