The Weird Insights of a Scobberlotcher

Twenty-one Sounds Dark Green to Black

After a few months hanging around the hospice I started to worry. Was this really my Fortress of Solitude? My retreat from having my face rubbed in what people really mean to say all the time? What if hanging out with the dying, eating their food and taking their socks was actually habit forming? What if I couldn't stop? What if I wanted more and more? Silly? Maybe, but it was increasingly intriguing traveling back and forth through the doors between two different lives. Even if you didn't actually fit in one cause you still claimed permanent residency in the other. Or maybe it was precisely because of that.

Usually it was mundane. All you can really offer the dying is comfort and most had plenty of that from more legitimate sources. But a few were amazing. Accelerated relationships. Conducted at light speed. Like Ruth, a woman of wonderfully wise naiveté who never once gave in to loneliness. She was born on the prairies during the depression. Left home and moved here with her husband when she was still in her teens. She never worked. Was terribly shy. Made few friends. All she ever had here was her home and her family. And now they were all gone. Husband and two childless children. Predeceased, leaving her all alone. We talked a lot. Got so she hardly spoke to the other volunteers.

She wore these tube socks. All the patients did. Thick wool in two colors, blue or gray. They were covered in rubbery white stripes to prevent slipping. They even had a little rubbery smiling face pasted on the top of each one. A bit perverse under the conditions but I really liked them. They looked supremely comfy. One day as I was helping her back into bed I pointed to them and said, "Ya know, Ruth, I'd really like to get into your socks." Fortunately she had a good, if relatively unexplored, sense of humor.

She hung on forever. That's more than two weeks hospice time. Near the end I went to see her just after the priest had been in to talk to her.

"Tell me, what do you think?' she asked out of nowhere. "Do you think it's true what Father says, that there's a place set for all of us at the table of the Lord? That we'll all be together again in the next life? I'm just not sure anymore. Not after what I've seen in this one."

Fraught. Just the sort of thing they tell volunteers in orientation to avoid like the plague. Worse, she was calling the police when her house was on fire. But I thought I'd give it a go anyway.

"Ya know, I'm not sure either, Ruth. I think I'd like to see the guest list first."

Tried not to let her slip away alone. Held her hand whenever I could. The last thing she said to me was, "Keep the socks and remember me."

It wasn't easy sneaking them off the ward. They rolled up into a big ball impossible to secrete. Finally came up with an ingenious solution. After they took her away I fished them out of the drawer where I hid them and threw them out her window. It was directly above the hospital side entrance. I fired them as far away into the staff parking lot as I could. Worked like a charm. Hustled down and there they were, a balled up pair of blues, on the ground beside a Lamborghini with vanity plates. Now I have a little piece of Ruth in my sock drawer. She comforts me on cold nights.