The beauty in simply holding someone’s hand

            Picture
walking into a concrete hospital, chanting music playing, hundreds of women,
men and children sitting everywhere, lining the walls, a smell that you
couldn’t burn out of your nose if you tried and them all looking up at you with
hope.  Hope that somehow we could fix
their problems in an instant.  My friend
Kelly and I made our way to the woman’s ward, these women are dying, there is
no way to know how long they have left all I know is I want to make their last
days count.  We went into a room we felt
like God was telling us to go in.  There
in that hospital room lie 2 women, both in there 20’s (what should be their
prime) and yet there they lie, unable to move, unable to speak, weak and alone. 

            In one bed was a woman who was not
there at all, but on the other side of the room was a woman that looked at
least semi able to hold a conversation. 
At first she was apprehensive as to why we were there, then after I
explained that we wanted to be her friend she was like OHHH ok and grabbed our
hands to properly greet us.  We chatted
for a while; she had been in the hospital over a week and had no visitors yet.
We got out my computer and played her music, made her a note to put up on her
wall, turned her fan on and fixed it so her and her roommate would have a nice
breeze to relieve them from the 110 degree F heat.  After a while she was too exhausted and
delirious from drugs to talk.  We sat in
a chair, she reached out her hand for ours and there we sat for over an hour,
holding her hand and listening to music. 

            There are
literally no words to describe the feeling of being able to provide comfort and
love through something as simple as holding her hand.  That simple gesture, knowing that she was
loving, knowing that no matter if she never had any visitors that we wanted to
spend time with her, we wanted to love on her and be a part of her life.  I only knew her for a few hours but I will
never forget that sweet smile and the gratitude her eyes expressed for just our
presence and willingness to be her friend. 
The simplicity of a loving touch from a stranger.  For that brief time she wasn’t alone,
laying in her agony, she had someone there to listen, just to be in room
with.  Nurses are no where to be found.  In the US, no matter how
poor you are, if you are in a hospital dying, a nurse is just a beep
away.  In this hospital I couldn’t even find one to ask a question. 
I cant imagine laying there in my own pee and poop, hurting, not being able to
do anything for myself and not knowing when the next person would come by or
when someone would come check on me, and all that is in my power to do is
wait. 

            As I write
this I am sitting here in Swaziland, Africa.  I am on top of
a mountain, surrounded by rolling mountains that go on for as far as the eye
can see.  Right now we cant really see anything because we are in a
cloud!  I am sitting on my bed and a cloud is rolling in through the
windows.  For part of the month we worked at care points.  The kids that we feed and play with at the
care points (when we were outside of manzini)  eat once a day.  The
meal we feed them is the only meal they get and when the care points aren’t
open on the weekends they get no food. The GoGo (grandma) that we lived with,
she took all of our left over food, no matter how moldy or rotten, she wanted
it.  All she had for food was a bag of beans that she eats off of for
months and months… she has lived there 70 years.  To the kids we feed,
rice is a delicacy.  Rice, the thing that us racers dread and are so sick
of because its the cheapest thing and thus we eat it all the time.  To
these children, it is a luxury because it is so expensive.  It really puts
things into perspective. My heart is breaking for them.