A child dressed as simply as a child can dress, entered a home for senior citizens, many with difficulties in moving,
Some, one step away from hospice care.
Without interruption, he went room to room. When the staff and workers at the facility encountered him,
He smiled
They smiled in return
Then let him pass
And do,
And say what he felt a need to do.
He went first to an old man and asked him what he would do if he could be young again
He growled
Snarled and raged about the world about him….
The boy frowned slightly
Touched the man’s forehead and smiled sadly
Feeling the anger,
Fear
And sadness of a lifetime bottled up for so long
Held onto as an identity.
Room to room he went,
Asking the same question over and over
Over and over
Sometimes he left alone
Other times
He left with wide eyed giggling children
Dressed in cast-off garments of Age.
Who found each other and left the Home laughing
Singing
Bubbling with joyful life and ambition.
Sometimes he left a room filled with a smile
A sad sorrowful smile
Then raised himself up and kept going… room to room.
Finally,
When the Home was near empty,
He encountered a lone old man trying to make his way down a hallway in a walker.
“What are you doing here, little boy” He asked,
“Are you lost”?
“No,” The boy replied,
“I am here to see if you (and others) are”
“What do you mean” the old man seemed to moan,
Sighing into the frame of the walker.
“If you had a chance to be young again,
NOT start over,
But to be young again,
How would you live
In body and mind”?
“Well isn’t that the damndest question” the man muttered.
The child waited…
Hearing the silence,
The old man entered it,
Reflecting on his life
Then smiled with tears in his eyes and said,
I would live every moment as-if it were my last
Respect and nurture my body and mind and those all around me.
I would practice, use and give all the compassion, empathy, love and kindness I learned
In this life
live it in my new life.
I would live simply
Without fear
Without anger
I would embrace my new life
My new world
All people
With a love I never felt I could share as I got older.”
The boy smiled,
Touched the hand of the old man resting on the walker.
His hand shook
He collapsed
Sobbing,
Then
A moment later,
Giggling,
Shrieking with childish laughter
He dressed himself in the over sized garments of Age
And as a child of what would be assumed was 5
Left the Home
To enter the light of new home beyond it’s doors.
