Today, I sat in the waiting room for the second time in two hospital days. I sat next to my boy knowing that I would bring him back tomorrow and then the day after, and possibly the day after that too. Some days that knowledge of coming back again and again is enough to make me cry.
Chase was beside me; quiet and preoccupied in his layered Chicago Cubs and Spider-Man shirts. He was less worried today than he was on the first day, but nobody loves injections, much less injections that need to go deep into muscle and infuse nausea with the medicine.
It could be worse, I thought to myself, my mind moving beyond this moment with Chase to the sister mama with the infant son in intensive care, the other sister mama dividing her time between her husband and son – both with tumors to fight… All the sister mamas in the hospital space… too many sister mamas (and papas too) in this hospital space. Just thinking about all the tears and pain held within the twenty-some floors is to be suddenly breathless… and then deeply weary.
Absently, I picked up my phone, aware of all the masks around us, names being called, the low whoosh of the main elevators just outside the doorway to the east check in.
Thinking of another oncology family and their own morning appointment, I opened the text screen: “I’m sending you love from the third floor”, I press send and whisper a prayer.
Across from us, the young mom holds a sobbing baby, the child crying as only a new infant can. And the tall atypical boy in the other corner was calling loud and unintelligible things as his tired mom tried to calm him and keep him seated. All around us, people wait for their next steps – six feet and often alone.
Chase curled into my side and I could feel the fuzz of his head along the scratching edges of my hospital-issued paper mask as he bends close, needing reassurance.
At that moment, my phone vibrated a sister mama reply into my hand:
“I left you love in the elevators”.
I stared down at the words as I listened to the whoosh of the six massive moving cells in the hall beyond where we sat.
The hospital elevators are legendary. They are colorful, large, and in a pre-covid world, always stuffed to the brim with visitors, parents, patients, and staff. I’ve watched people talk, take calls, have arguments, work with crying children, get lost between floors, and stand quietly in the very corners with tears streaming down their faces – working to cope with a grief that hit harder than the desire for privacy. Sooner or later, every single person at the hospital does life in those elevator spaces.
What if there was love in the elevator spaces – in all the spaces beyond the hospital too?
How would we change and grow if we knew love was behind and before us always?
What would life grief look like if we lived as if love was our legacy?
And when the injection was finally done, I got back into an elevator with Chase. We were alone as we rode down the short distance to the lobby, but I imagined the love from my cancer sister mama. It wasn’t physically tangible, but it was known. And love in the elevator was all I needed to find hope in the …
Moment by moment.
Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children…”
1 Corinthians 13:7, 1 John 3:1a, NLT
