Someone said that his bitterness was justified. His beloved wife died, giving birth to their only child. The infant subsequently succumbed to complications soon after.
"He has reason to be bitter," they said in town. He never went to Church and never had anything to do with anyone. When, in his late sixties, they carried him out of his apartment and over to the hospital to die, no one visited, no flowers were sent. He went there to die alone.
There was a nurse though. Well, she wasn't actually a nurse yet, just a student nurse. Because she was in training, she didn't yet know everything that they teach in nursing school about the necessity of detachment -- the need to distance oneself from one's patients.
Instinctively, however, the young nurse befriended the old man. It had been so long since he had friends, he didn't know how to react to such kind attention. Continually he told her, "Go away! Leave me alone!" She would only smile and try to coax him to swallow his Jell-O. At night, she would tuck him in.
"Don't need nobody to help me," he would growl.
Soon, the man grew so weak he did not have the strength to resist the nurse's care. Late one night, after her duties were done, she pulled up a chair and sat by his bed, singing to him as she held his old, gnarled hand. And he looked up at her in the dim lamplight and wondered if he saw the face of a little one he never got to see as an adult. And a tear formed in his eye when she gently kissed him goodnight on his forehead. And for the first time in 40, maybe 50 years, he muttered, "God bless you!"
And as the nurse left the room with her lips forming the hint of a smile, two otherworldly figures appeared, breathless, whispering softly in the old man's ear the last three words he heard before slipping away into the dark valley. The words were " We've gotcha dad" -- whispered in unison.
"Don't need nobody to help me," he would growl.
Soon, the man grew so weak he did not have the strength to resist the nurse's care. Late one night, after her duties were done, she pulled up a chair and sat by his bed, singing to him as she held his old, gnarled hand. And he looked up at her in the dim lamplight and wondered if he saw the face of a little one he never got to see as an adult. And a tear formed in his eye when she gently kissed him goodnight on his forehead. And for the first time in 40, maybe 50 years, he muttered, "God bless you!"
And as the nurse left the room with her lips forming the hint of a smile, two otherworldly figures appeared, breathless, whispering softly in the old man's ear the last three words he heard before slipping away into the dark valley. The words were " We've gotcha dad" -- whispered in unison.
And they departed into the darkness, all three of them, hand in hand.
Surely goodness and mercy followed the young nurse for the balance of her shift...and hopefully the rest of her life because God, through a mean and dying old man, had blessed her.
~~This could very well have been a true story.
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