It seems to me that a room or a building or a field or a town can be a container for memories you once left there, so returning to this place after a long time can be a powerful experience. Of course, the person you are on the day you return can temper the exchange. It’s a collaboration of ideas in that way, as if the familiar space is someone to fall into conversation with, reminding you of things you hadn’t thought about in years. For a moment, you can pick up where you left off, but of course, you’ve changed in the meantime, and now you are simply a listener. One day it might feel awful to return, as if the place is haunted. But another time, maybe you are ghost passing through, separate, detached. I guess it depends on how ready one is to listen…or to re-interpret the story.

This is something that’s been on my mind lately, which is probably why I was ready for my unplanned field trip this afternoon. I happened to have an appointment in the Mission Hospital complex. Remember Mission Hospital? That’s where Vernon was in his coma for three months (now so long ago.) Ah, the blissful days of not having to figure anything out…not really, they were scary, but back then, all I could do was hang out and wait and hope. I spent a lot of time walking around the hospital, noticing the things and people around me. I was a different version of myself then, but I’ve been meaning to go back and walk the grounds again…I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Guess I was waiting for an invitation.

Since I had enough time after my appointment, I decided to take the long walk back to my car, which meant circling around the back of the hospital by the ER. I only ever had to deal with this particular ER once, so I didn’t think I had much emotion attached to it, but as I walked by I saw a Davita Dialysis truck parked outside. Ugh. Davita Dialysis—probably my least two favorite words in the world anymore. I’ll admit that triggered a little mistiness, not for the memories of the hospital itself, but for the younger me that didn’t realize when he started dialysis in that hospital, it didn’t just mean extending his life as we were able, but that it would eventually be a huge sacrifice of energy and life-quality. I couldn’t have known (and if I had—I probably would  have made the same choice.) But moving on quickly, I walked past the outdoor tables of the cafeteria, where I used to eat my oddly-timed lunches. I smiled at the sight of doctors and nurses gabbing and laughing under their table-umbrellas. What a sight. I was glad to see that they could still find moments to connect as normal humans within their stressful duties and difficult interactions. As I came around the corner of the building, I noticed the huge fountain out front. How compassionate that architect or planning committee must have been to welcome guests in with the comforting sight-sound of running water. I don’t know if I appreciated that before, but I certainly could now.

As I ventured into the lobby (I’d come this far, why not?) and noticed the people waiting in chairs or volunteering at the desk, I remembered thinking once-upon-a-time that every person there was going through something too. They are hopeful, thankful, relieved, worried, or in mourning. Hospitals manage to press all of this into a single nutshell. A hospital is meant to be a building of healing…even though trauma can sometimes make us think of them as the opposite. The barista at the coffee kiosk I used to visit was a girl I didn’t recognize. If it were still my old friend who made my daily cappuccinos, I would have queued up. Instead, I entered the gift shop, thinking: “Maybe there is a message here? I’ll look for one of Vernon’s fonts.” But the only ones I saw were on new-baby onesies. How funny is that? (Our friends who had a baby in the same hospital last month had mentioned how strange and disturbing it was to hear emergency that went through the building from the ICU, calling specialists to that ward, when they were in the middle of labor. And I remember the comfort of hearing the occasional  angelic chimes that rang through the entire hospital every time a fresh new life exited the front doors. It’s clearly all happening there in one building: birth, death, and the physical complications that stretch between.)

I didn’t feel like I had the right to visit the ICU, nor did I really want to, but in passing the doors that would lead there, I recalled there was a meditative chapel just inside that I could access. I visited the space a couple of times in my early days and found it quite comforting as a place to escape on breaks from coma-vigil. No one was there today, thankfully, or I would have turned around. Immediately, I noticed the little basket of prayer-requests on a table by the door. I wondered if I had written something of my own once, surely I must have. I sat down to read what was there, hoping to honor someone else’s reality and pain. Perhaps it is because the chapel is next to the Trauma Unit (NICU) there were a couple of hand-written statements about someone who is in there right now…suffering from blood clots. They were concerned he would be brain damaged. I hurt for these people, knowing a little of what they might be going through upstairs. I didn’t know how to pray for them, but I did sit and cry for them a bit, holding space for their pain and hope and fear in my heart, mingled with the little I recalled of my own.  Maybe that was the purest prayer I could offer.

Then I walked back out to my car, with my validated parking ticket, free to move into the rest of my day without deep concern for a family member in one of those rooms and grateful to not have to visit regularly. I was simply a passing tourist, an observant ghost who happened to come through on this day, separate now from everything going on there, but connected by indelible strings. If I’d have gone on a different day, I would have experienced it differently perhaps. But today was the day it was meant to be, the day I was invited back, the day I was ready to listen.

“Now the act of seeing begins your work of mourning.

And your memory is ready to show you everything.

Having waited all these years for you to return and know.

………

So that for the first time, you can walk away from that place,

Reunited with your banished heart, now healed and freed,

And feel the clear, free air bless your new face.”

—John O’Donohue