In sickness and in health

A typical night of serenading a hospital floor is like flipping through a picture book of life -- LIFE with its warmth and coldness, sweetness and bitterness; life with its infinite facets, manifested in each face, each spoken and unspoken word, each gesture, each breath.

There is nothing like sickness that reveals the hard reality of life, the absolute, naked truth. It strikes everything in its path with a vengeance--promises, relationships--stripping away layers and layers of niceties until the core is shown in its true state: ugly and repulsive, or beautiful and fragrant.

I once met a woman in the corridor of an oncology unit, fatigue written all over her sleep-deprived face. My guide John, a regular volunteer in the hospital, asked her how her mother was doing. "She's okay," the woman said, then let out a long sigh. "You know, she's really not that bad. With some real rest and without my dad aggravating her, she really can recover quite nicely."

I met another couple this week, also in an oncology unit, though in a different hospital. The husband invited me to go in and play for his wife, but after she makes a stop in the bathroom. My guide and I waited in the hallway, chatting about his vacation to Italy. From the corner of my eyes, I saw the wife making her way laboriously towards the bathroom, her husband standing by her, one arm around her waist, and the other wheeling the IV pole.

The trip took awhile. When they came back, I had made up my mind to play one of my favorites, "All I Ask Of You" from "Phantom of the Opera." A few seconds into the song, the wife suddenly turned to her husband and started crying softly. The husband gently smoothed the wrinkles on the bed sheet and held her hand. "That was our wedding song," she told us through tears and sniffles. "Eighteen years ago," he said.

Love me--that's all I ask of you...so the song goes. I guess they never thought, of all things, that it would be sickness that comes to prove how strong those vows are.