To Ease the Passing of Time

The old man looks at the falling snow through the window of his hospital room. He was admitted to the Pontiac hospital in Shawville a few days ago. He had a mild heart attack while watching a hockey game on TV. “He must have been too excited when his team scored a goal”, his wife said. Nobody is going to come to visit him today. It has been snowing all night and part of the day. Way too dangerous for his wife to drive, and his children live a few hours away, in Ottawa. The nurse is very nice. She speaks English with a French accent. Way back when he was young, you never heard a word of French spoken in this hospital. She came about half an hour ago to check on him. She said she’ll come back later.

The old man is of Norwegian descent. He’s from Norway Bay, a small town a few kilometers from Shawville. His ancestors came to Canada at the beginning of the last century. He still lives in the old house where his father and grandfather were born.

His eyes are closed but he is not really sleeping. He is not really awake either. He sees children sliding down a hill surrounded by fir trees in the middles of the woods. He sees their happy faces with their cheeks red from the cold. He hears them laugh. He can feel the wind.

He met his wife in church. Church always played an important role in their lives, even if he drifted away from it for a while, and even though he was not always a good Christian. He opens his eyes again. He looks around the room. His small suitcase and his hat are on a shelf in the closet. The bathroom door is half open and the light is on. The old man he shares the room with is lying on his back snoring with his mouth half open. The nurse gave him an injection, probably morphine. The poor guy has cancer.

It smells like it smells in all hospitals. He remembers that smell from when he was a kid and he had to go to the hospital to visit his grandfather, the same hospital he is in now. Gee, he hates that smell!

He closes his eye again. This time, he is lying in the middle of a field. He must be around ten or eleven years old. He is chewing a piece of straw like farmers and cowboys in old western movies. In the deep blue sky, the sun is bright. There are only a few clouds, white and puffy like cotton. Butterflies and bees are flying around him, going from one flower to the other. It smells like hay, manure and wild flowers. He feels that he is a small part of that infinite Universe, and that God is everywhere and in everything.

And then, without a transition, it changes completely. He must be around fifteen or sixteen. He cannot sleep. He’s worried about his future and what life has in store for him. He comes down the stairs quietly and goes outside to sit on the gallery. He looks at the moon and the sky full of stars, and he thinks that, as he heard in a song on the radio the other day, it’s a wonderful world. He feels a warm and loving presence inside him. He tells himself that he never wants to forget that moment.

When he opens his eyes, again, the nurse is there. She asks him if he is okay and if he needs anything. He says no. He just wants to go back to sleep.

Now his eyes are closed again and the memories are rushing in his head like a fast train: his first car that he totalled one night when he was drunk, his wedding, his first job, when he started his business selling farming equipment, the birth of his children, when his daughter almost died from pneumonia, the death of his parents.

His eyes are now wide open and he is completely awake. He is thinking about all the bad stuff he did in his life: the lies he told girls in order to have sex with them, his drinking, when his wife gave birth to their first child alone in the hospital because he was out drinking and playing poker with his buddies, his bragging and foolishness, his need to be appreciated and loved without giving anything in return, the time he cheated on his wife when he was on a business trip, how he tricked his business partner into signing a document that made him the sole owner of the business they started together. His partner left town shortly after and never came back. He never saw him again…even on Facebook.

He has remorse. He feels guilty. He wishes he could start his life all over again to do a better job. He is afraid of dying. He is afraid of God. He thinks of all the things he was taught in Sunday school about hell and all that stuff. And then he thinks about what he was taught about love and forgiveness. He thinks about Jesus on his cross and what he said to the good thief.

When he closes his eyes again, he is on a trip he took to Norway with his wife a few years after they retired. They are near a lake, in a bright and spacious but very simple room with large windows. A young woman with blonde hair is playing the trumpet. It is not the loud and angry sound of judgement and retribution but the sweet and gentle music of love and compassion.

When the nurse comes back to check on him before the end of her shift, the old man is sleeping. He has a beautiful smile on his face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AhTqec1VFg