It was only my second week at work, my first “real” job. When I’d had my interview a short while before, the most pressing question I’d been asked by the retirement home’s marketing director – a small, but fiery, well-groomed brunette in her 50s who didn’t mince words – “And why do you think that you, at 23 years old, would be able to relate well to our residents – most of them in their 70s, 80s, and 90s?” “Because I have always enjoyed the wisdom and the stories folks from that generation have to share. I love to listen to them, to try to imagine life for them then, life for them now, with all the changes they’ve witnessed…Always had a great love for my elders, feel like our culture doesn’t respect and value them as we should, want to help create a new culture, help fix that failing in my own generation…” And so she, Betsy, she gave me the job, it said so, right there on the small, gold plaque on my office door, there on the 2nd floor – Julie LeFeber, Activities Director.

So I set about thinking up activities and typing up monthly calendars and daily posters, holding morning coffees with sticky buns, and Bingo on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in the lobby, taking folks out for lunch, to concerts downtown, to the drugstore to buy soap and dental floss and hard candies. I made it my top priority to get to know each and everyone’s names – first and last -as quickly as possible, over 100 of them, living in three different buildings. My very favorite thing in those first few weeks: to pass someone walking down the hallway, on their way to chapel or breakfast or book club, to look right into their eyes and say their name, their full name. “Good morning, Anne Johnson!” “How are you this afternoon, Les Brehm?” “Is your wife feeling any better today, Bill Lutes?” At first, looks of astonishment, then wide smiles. Gained quite a reputation there, had people coming up to me, quizzing me: “What’s MY name?” “What’s her name? And his name?” And mostly, I knew.

So when I overheard at lunch one day that Agnes Carothers was in the hospital, I knew who Agnes Carothers was, though I was pretty sure she didn’t know me, me being new and all. I’d be driving right past the hospital on my way home after work anyway, I reasoned, so it wouldn’t hurt to stop in for a brief minute, even though it wasn’t technically part of my job description. It would be a kind thing to do, help me get to know folks better.

Parked the car there in the garage, found the friendly hospital volunteer sitting at the desk, asked which room Agnes was in, hopped on the elevator, and quickly found myself on the 6th floor, the Intensive Care Unit.

Now being 23 years old and in good health, I hadn’t spent much time in hospitals. I was born in one, I mean. And I did have to go to the emergency room when I’d broken my arm in 5th grade, doing the limbo on roller skates – that one completely mortifying time. But beyond that, nothing. And so, when I stepped off the elevator that evening, I was almost entirely oblivious, could not have guessed what was to come, what my time with Agnes would be like. The door to her room was slightly ajar, and I pushed it open slowly, whispering her name as I walked in.

She was lying down there in the bed, looking small and still – her thin, white hair matted against the sheets, glasses off, eyes closed, a tube coming from her nose, needles in her arms. She didn’t hear me at first, but when I sat down on the plastic chair there beside her bed and reached for her hand, her bright blue eyes flickered open. As Agnes realized where she was, those eyes of hers quickly filled with panic, her body began to twitch some, as if her mind was telling her to jump up and run away, but she couldn’t make her body cooperate.

At first I thought it was me that was causing her fear, causing pain. But, no. When the harsh reality set in, that she was stuck there in that bed, hooked up to those meds and machines, she clung to me, to my hand, with surprising strength, pinched my fingers together till they hurt even. Her wild eyes, they pleaded silently with me to help her, to get her out of here, to rescue her somehow. I smiled helplessly at her. She tried to speak, but was so very hard to understand, being that what was left of her voice was quiet and scratchy and her words all flowed together into one long, muffled sound. But I leaned closer in and watched her lips and eventually made out a few phrases she kept repeating insistently, over and over again: “Please don’t leave me” and “I’m so afraid” and “I don’t want to die.”

I tried to offer comfort, prayed Peace for her out loud and in my head. Murmured words: “All is well” and “All will be well,” and other soft words my mom had used to soothe me when I’d ached. But nothing seemed to still her, to bring her Rest.

So after I had sat there with Agnes for over an hour, my stomach started to growl and I began glancing at the clock, knowing that Nathan would soon be home from work, wondering where I was. I told Agnes I needed to go home now, that I would try and come see her again tomorrow, that the doctors and nurses would take good care of her. But she clung even tighter to me, her wild eyes searching me out, pleading with me not to go, not to leave her all alone.

My heart was heavy as I walked out of her hospital room that night. And the next day, Agnes was gone from this world.

I learned that Agnes had never married, had never had any children, had an older brother who’d died a decade or so before, had only one nephew, a man in his 70s now, who lived in California, and that he wouldn’t be coming to Nebraska to help with the final preparations, wouldn’t be there as her body was lowered into the dark earthen hole. And I grieved for this woman I barely knew, grieved that there was no one there to grieve her, grieved that her last hours here were full of panic and pleading and fear when they could have been filled with Love and Peace and Hope.

And so I saw firsthand what death means to one who does not Know. And I made up my mind, at 23, that when it was my time to die, I would go willingly, like an obedient child, without a tantrum or a fuss, that He could take me when and how He wanted and I would be undaunted, would not fear.

Because we all leave this world and, though we can’t choose the time or the thing that ultimately takes us, we can each of us choose if we want to go kicking and screaming, clinging to what we have always known. Or if we will enter Life at rest, trusting that He will be there to guide us gently into the Unknown. And if we truly know Beauty Himself, Love Himself in the here and now, we know that the Unknown can only be Beautiful and Right and Full, a place, a state, where we are restored to Wholeness and Life and All Good Things.

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