Windows

My church does a ministry at a local nursing home, singing old hymns & revival songs, as well as sometimes giving a sermon; this afternoon we went and did an afternoon service, and a lady who I had seen meandering about in her PVC-piped-wheelchair contraption joined us for, as far as I can remember, the first time. She didn't say much and chose to stand, pacing slowly and maneuvering around in spaces much too small for her wheeled-pipe seat, getting stuck between a particular couch and coffe table several times before someone moved it for her convenience, even forcing one man to put his feet on the couch to avoid conflict. Eccentric and distracted don't quite cover this lady's behavior. She finally rolled over right in front of where I was sitting on a couch next to my madre and sat down, silently facing me while we sang, staring...staring...staring. We've met enough old timers whose minds are a bit, eh, incomplete, so this wasn't entirely shocking, though slightly uncomforatble; still, I could handle this. I smiled and looked at the hymnal in my lap.

I should have kept looking down. But there's something rather unnerving about having a silent, white-haired lady staring at you as you sing (and not very well), so I glanced up, and she's still staring, but then her eyes start to roll back into her head, and I'm like, oh dear, but then her eyes snap forward and she's staring again--staring, never blinking. So I force a half-hearted smile and look back to my hymnal. Well, I looked back a few times, each time to find her eyes staring, then loosing focus, rolling back, and snapping forward again. This happens several times, disconcerting me, the cycle only varying occasionally with her rocking back and forth.

It was in the third song, Revive Us Again, she slowly, ponderously, reaches out her hand toward me, staring, staring...

..All glory and praise
To the Lamb that was slain,
Who hath borne all our sins,
And hath cleansed every stain...

She's reaching and freaking me out, her eyes never wavering or blinking, and I'm considering contacting an exorcist, but my madre rescues me from my uncertainty by taking her hand, smiling sweetly, and trying to listen to the lady's words, which are hopelessly jarbbled by the music, sounding very much like an incantaion of sorts. So they just sit there, holding hands for a minute, then she lets go and reverts to staring. Anyway, she reaches out again, my mom takes her hand, and this time uses my madre's hand to help pull herself up, resuming her pacing until, eventually, a path is made wide enough between the abundant wheelchairs to grant her escape.

On later discussion, mom and I decided she was probably havingsome sort of seizure. There was something decidedly disconcerting about her eyes, though, alternately present and absent, piercing and lost.

Oh, how I never want to grow old.