Those Eyes

For today's sermon, I created a story. It begins:

Betty walked into a hospital room with a teddy bear. It wasn’t a private room, but the first bed was empty. The second bed, the one closest to the window, was surrounded by a confusing profusion of equipment, common in the cardiac unit. She stepped closer. The patient was asleep. A woman lying flat on her back, with her head slightly raised and feet elevated. It didn’t look comfortable. But the patient seemed to be in a deep asleep.

Betty didn’t want to wake the patient, but she did want her to have the bear if the woman wanted one. She looked around the hospital room, taking in the surroundings. The chair by the bed and looked emptier than usual. So often in hospital visits she saw family or friends camped out alongside the bed. Even if no one else was in the room at the time, there were usually the tell tale signs of a bedside vigil kept the night before. But this patient didn’t seem to have any such visitors.

Betty stood holding the bear feeling indecisive. The situation looked like one that could use a little more love. But what should she do? Should she let the woman rest? Should she wake her? Should she just leave the bear without a word?

Betty looked at the patient’s wrist. The ID bracelet said the woman’s name was “Concepcion Rivera Morales.” The equipment quietly beeped and whirred. A long minute passed. She prayed for guidance, and then felt sure she should say something. This woman needed a teddy bear and she needed it now.

“Concepcion, I brought you a gift,” Betty said firmly, then paused. The equipment continued with its steady beeps. The lines moved across the screen scrawling an ongoing record of the patient’s vital signs. She watched Concepcion’s eyelids. No movement.

Betty said, “If you find yourself lonely or afraid, just give him a hug.” Then she added, “teddy bears are great huggers.”

Another long pause. She didn’t seem to hear. Perhaps the patient was unconscious. Who knew if she had even heard the words? Betty placed the teddy alongside Concepcion, on the side away from the IV tubes, so that the bear was touching her arm.

From someplace deep, Concepcion felt herself struggling toward the surface. Someone had spoken her name. There was something about a hug. She had heard that too. And then something about a bear. It didn’t make sense. Concepcion fought her way ever upward.

She wasn’t sure where she was or what was happening, but then the sounds of the hospital equipment began to orient her thoughts. She could vaguely remember passing out while cleaning yet another in the endless procession of rooms at the hotel. She could recall something of the ambulance ride and then the bright lights of what must have been the emergency room; then she remembered nothing until now.

As her eyes fluttered open, Concepcion saw the teddy bear lying alongside her. She smiled and then caught a glimpse of the person who brought her the gift. Recognition dawned on Concepcion. Those eyes. She knew those eyes. She had seen them before. When was it? Her mind, dulled as it was after having lost consciousness, couldn’t make the connection. She smiled and closed her eyes again, trying to remember.

Concepcion was aware that something had happened in the room. She heard the sharp beep. The footsteps, the shouts. Something was happening, but she didn’t know what. It was those eyes she focused on. Where had she seen them?

They looked like her great-grandmother’s eyes. Those almond brown eyes that looked on her with such love. But it couldn’t be her great-grandmother. Her Nana died long ago, even before Concepcion left Puerto Rico as a young teen. Her great-grandmother had never even visited New York City. But those were somehow those were her Nana’s eyes. It made no sense, but there was no denying it either.

The room grew more distant. Concepcion felt disconnected from the activity bustling around her. She realized she was more disinterested onlooker now than the active participant. She didn’t care. She was lost in thought, trying to remember how she knew the person who brought her the teddy bear.

The room brightened. She didn’t so much hear as feel Jesus speaking her name, “Concepcion.”

“Yes,” she replied.

“I saw the recognition in your eyes, dear child,” Jesus replied, not merely in Spanish, but in the familiar tones of home, warm and comforting as hot chocolate on an icy winter’s day.

“I know you,” she said slowly…her voice quavering a bit now.

“Don’t be afraid,” again the feeling of warmth and love filled the words and touched Concepcion’s heart. She had doubted what she was experiencing was even possible. Then thinking of her husband, she wondered if she would see Javier. Her heart quickened.

“This is not the time,” was the reply to the question left unasked.

“But I’ve been so lonely since he died,” Concepcion pleaded. “The children have moved away. They have lives of their own. I am alone.” Then after a thoughtful pause, Concepcion added angrily, “Why did you abandon me? Why have you left me?”

“I have not left you. I will not leave you,” was the strong reply, leaving no room for doubt and yet Concepcion could not agree.

“No, you did leave me,” she shot back. “You have been gone. I stopped reading the Bible, when the words brought no comfort. I still go to communion, more out of habit than anything. I leave feeling so empty,” her voice trailed off at the end. There was a pause and then her words gained force as she added, “I look for you everywhere, and you are absent. I wonder if you were ever with me at all.”

“Concepcion, I was there in the heart of the woman who brought you the teddy bear. She heard me speaking to her heart, knowing she had to visit the hospital today. I was there with Maria when she found you at the hotel so soon after your heart attack. And I am there now in the doctor who is fighting to bring you back to life. I never left you. You were just so hurt after Javier’s death that you couldn’t recognize me anymore.”

The full text of the story is online here: Those Eyes.