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Wheel of fate

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg

By Rabbi Hillel Goldberg

Published Jan. 23, 2015

Wheel of fate

I AM AFRAID to ask their names, although I don't know why. I am afraid of a lot of things. Truly it is irrational, for how can a person just one line above the catatonic hurt me?

He stands there, quite tall, about 6' 3", I'd say. Sort of rotating slowly on the balls of his feet, moving neither forward nor backward, with this plastic grin on his face. It is different, extremely different, from the "plastic smile" we attribute to superficial people.

This grin is engraved on his face as if on Mt. Rushmore, and is absolutely expressionless. It's just a formation of muscles, that's all. I am wretched inside when I see him, and feel the height of guilt for just passing him by as I move along to my appointed task; though the truth is I feel just as wretched and guilty when I pass others on these floors.

There are, goodness knows, any number of people I pass. When I first enter the facility, I notice no desk, no attendant, no doctor, no social worker, no nurse, only this: Inevitably sitting in front of me in a wheelchair is this thin, older, toothless lady. Sometimes she is staring upward into space, her eyes absolutely fixed; other times she moves slightly and acknowledges me as I pass; rarely, she utters something. It is always unintelligible.

Decked out on her wheelchair are various small items, medicines or snacks perhaps. This wheelchair is her home, her prison, seemingly affixed to its place like a mountain. No one moves her when I am there.

A man, perhaps 30 years younger than I and 200 pounds heavier than I, very slowly maneuvers himself in a motorized wheelchair. In the elevator he goes up one floor, he moves around on the floor, he goes down a floor; there seems to be no purpose to his very slow peregrinations. He appears absolutely unmoved if someone cuts him off so that he must wait for the elevator to return. Sometimes it seems as though his maneuvers require intense concentration; other times, it as if these maneuvers are as effortless as they are apparently pointless. It seems that he is not allowed out, not even around the block, not that there seems to be anyone with the time to wheel him around the block. This is his universe: a floor, a hallway, then the next, with long periods sitting in his wheelchair in one place. Among those who passes him by are others appearing to be similarly aimless, detached.

Every time I visit this place, officially a skilled nursing facility but actually a refuge for the mentally ill, the tailor-made facilities for whom the state will no longer pay, I silently recoil. Just walking in the door makes something in me freeze. The building on the outside is marked in no distinguishing way; it is in the heart of a residential neighborhood. Thousands of people drive by it every day. Within its walls is an alternative universe, at its root not a home of the physically ill, the physically disabled, the homeless, or the accident victim in rehab, all of whom live in the same universe as the rest of us, with all of whom we may discourse on one level or another. This is different. It hits you as you enter; you need not say a word to anyone and no one need say a word to you. It's a gestalt, a totally different universe; a discontinuous conundrum. Disturbing.

Every time I come I see someone new. How long has he or she been here? How long will he or she stay? It all seems a mystery, but the physical shock hits me anew. He or she may be unkempt, but no more so than any number of people walking down the street; he or she may be sartorially disjointed, a baseball cap that doesn't match the shirt, or the pants that don't match the shoes, but again one sees this daily as it is common enough on the streets, in the buses, or on the subway. Here the gestalt is different. What faces you is not a fashion challenge but a reflection of life without any apparent coherence.

The staff conscientiously goes about its business, administering medicines, giving shots, preparing meals, keeping tabs on residents, turning the heat up or down; no doubt, meeting federal and state regulations, following the mandates. But interaction? The two groups under one roof, residents and staff, are like parallel lines. Perhaps it cannot be otherwise. I show up a half hour a week; the staff must remain in this environment presumably eight hours a day, five days a week. Is interaction realistic beyond the mandates?

Once, as I entered the library/TV room of the facility, a priest of some denomination was just finishing his ministrations. On some level the attendees were touched; at least, touched enough to come. I said to myself as I watched this man of the cloth quickly closing up shop after he finished, given that it was impossible for him to trade even a phrase with the participants: Here is someone reaching the depths of humility and anonymity, trying to do the work of the Creator. I was reminded of Van Gogh's early desire to enter the ministry to serve the anonymous, abandoned peasantry that so attracted him. No one watched the simplest of people, no one cared. But G0D. He cared. And Van Gogh cared. This priest cared.

On occasion there is music and dancing in the dining room by a few residents. Whom am I to say how music affects the soul of someone else? Still I cannot deny the evidence of the senses: The soft notes are played one after the other, the simple dance moves proceed, but any sense of progression or repetition emerging from the tune seems absolutely absent. The human beings move along as if by slight electric shock, seemingly absent any will, any actual participation. Music: something to break the monotony. It doesn't.

MY COMINGS AND goings on Fridays -- Sabbath eve -- week in and week out, have registered on a small minority of the populace in this facility, so that on occasion I receive a nod; that's it. Words seems unutterable, or beyond any perceptible meaning, like the sounds on the old TV "test patterns" of the 1950s. Is there something to be afraid of here? It's almost as if momentarily I slip into the persona of the people who surround me, unable to communicate.

In any event, the one person I come to see is distinguished by his radical difference from the rest of the populace. Proudly displayed on his living space — half a room, perhaps 10 feet long and 8 feet wide for the totality of his possessions — is his diploma from law school and his masters degree in history. Jonathan (I shall call him) is nothing if not articulate, a wealth of knowledge at his fingertips. He once proudly showed me a letter of recommendation given him decades earlier by a college professor of his, a Nobel Laureate in Literature, who wrote that Jonathan was "teeming with all kinds of ideas" or something to that effect.

My erev Shabbos (Sabbath eve) visits with Jonathan pull me in a vortex even more paralyzing than the one I first feel upon entering the facility. Why is Jonathan here? How does he, with more education than not only his fellow residents but also the staff, persist, day in and day out?

It seems that Jonathan, at this stage, would be unable to live on his own, and is in need of the care he receives from the staff, but why is he in this particular institution? In my heart, I know that were I to take the time to visit with others here I might learn, somehow, their own entrapments and tragedies that, in some other setting, might recede somehow; I might learn how they could step out of their prisons, or at least peer beyond them. Jonathan? He is always regaling me with his hopes, via the legal system, to right an injustice done to him. He is always regaling me with stories that I would never hope to hear, such as his great-grandfather's relationship with one of the founders of the Soviet Union; or his uncle's care of President John F. Kennedy's mentally disabled sister; or . . . there is always some nugget, often an historical one, that I leave with. Jonathan seems to know the history of, and the literature on, WW II in all its major categories.

Jonathan also shares with me his various research projects of the past, including a long, brilliant synthesis of the causes of the Russian Revolution; and an exploration of the economic success of a Colorado Jewish pioneer. I take these home and read them. The darkness deepens. The author of such penetrating, and engaging, papers is limited to a 10"x8" space, itself within an environment beyond words, literally; his talents as yet unrealized; his family out of touch; his sole, regular visitor, me (apparently); his link to Judaism the challah loaf I bring him on erev Shabbos and the matzah on Pssover eve (the Chanukah candles didn't work out due to the maze of rules).

The truth is, I visit him not only for the pleasure of seeing him but also to walk into this respatialized universe for the unmentionables and forgettables of society, this space that frightens me.

It is good for me to know about this. It is as natural as can be to live in modern day America and take for granted the most basic benefits of being alive: the ability to speak and to be understood; the ability to laugh, to ponder, to question; the ability to determine where I walk; the financial wherewithal to purchase a bag of potato chips; the choice to move from one building to the next; the comfort of lying down on a bed that is my own, knowing that someone else, not a stranger, will be there next to me, or in the next room, or the next block or, at the very least, on the end of the phone line or email chain. If nothing else, to visit the place where Jonathan lives is to carry gratitude to an entirely new level.

Perhaps my fear is a defense mechanism against convulsive tears. Some situations seem truly irremediable, absolutely hopeless. Not to mention, who knows what simple, slight rotation of the wheel of fate might have landed me in this very same position?

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Rabbi Hillel Goldberg is executive editor of the Intermountain Jewish News and the author of several books on biblical and Judaic themes. His writings have appeared in JWR since its inception.

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