The Leper

I have met many lepers over the years.  Social pariahs, outcast by society, outcast by self, these people soldier on through life as if the import of others words does not affect them, and the attitudes toward their malady, from which its onset they are completely innocent, destroy them faster than the disease itself.

I’m not talking about the various skin diseases the Bible mentions as ‘leprosy.’  For those who had eczema, psoriasis or, yes, leprosy, life was miserable.  Not only did their outward appearance exclude them from any social, theological or emotional discourse, it cut them off from everyone else.  Everyone, that is, except those who carried the same marks of the disease.  In communities they were kept outside of villages left to wander and beg shouting “Leper!  Unclean!” so that those who would approach would know that they would be contaminated by interaction.  Imagine the shame of pronouncing your innocent guilt – being cursed with leprosy not because you’ve done anything wrong, but that’s just the way the football bounces sometimes – when those that pass by you are guiltier of worse: slander, envy, greed, lust… you’ve heard of all seven, probably, but because they occur from the inside, they can be hidden, to a point.  While these lepers wander in colonies, trapped by their skin and their words, they are left to ponder the fairness of life.  Why has it come to this?  Where did we go wrong?  What have we done to deserve ostracision and rejection?

No, we don’t have many lepers any more, what few that inhabit the earth are constrained in villages cared for by people who are the truest of living saints.  But leprosy runs rampant in every country, city, town and village in the world.  It is not chained by any human emotion and its evidence seen visibly on the epidermis.

It is old age.

Think about it.  Instead of leprosariums, we have nursing homes.  By and large, they are wonderful places inhabited by excellent people, but society has cast out the aged simply because their wrinkles are a representation of the sin of the genome.  We cannot escape death so we push those who carry the mark as far as possible from us.  What used to be a sign of wisdom and erudition is now a symbol of the curse of death.

 

Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is attained by a righteous life.  -  Proverbs 16:31

The glory of young men is their strength, gray hair the splendor of the old.  -  Proverbs 20:29

 

Our Bible states it clearly: with age comes various benefits and for the vast majority of time, the elderly will looked with reverence.  Their opinions were always sought when any decisions were made.  They lived with their children when age dug furrows in their furrows, stamped crows’ feet around their eyes and stained their hands with liver spots.  But the leprosy of agedness has brought about the idolatry of youth like no other age.

In the last fifteen years, cosmetic surgeries have increased by almost 200 percent in the United States.  Ten billion dollars was spent, over half of which was dedicated to surgical procedures, 1.7 billion dollars on injections, 1.6 billion dollars on skin rejuvenation and a measly $360 million spent on other non-surgical procedures.[1]  Americans spent ten billion dollars on converting our epidermises to plastic, making sure our breasts don’t succumb to gravity, sucking out fat cells so our designer clothes will fit and abrading our skin so that we look ten years younger. 

Talk about a fear of death.

Vanity.  It’s all vanity wrapped in the cloak of despair.  We are uncomprehending of the life after so we are perfectly comfortable abandoning sense so that this life ‘looks’ better.  Too bad there isn’t cosmetic surgery for the soul.

I remember one ‘leper’ very well.  Her name was Katherine.  During the time between my first two years of seminary, I was required to Clinical Pastoral Education, which basically meant I had to spend the summer apart from my family and choose a place where I could learn to listen, learn to ask questions and basically crucify my own ego. 

Yes, it was that much fun. 

Our family had just increased by one as the birth of our daughter, Greta, occurred in my first year of seminary.  Needless to say Christine wasn’t all that excited about doing all the domestic activities for three children all younger than four years of age.  But, CPE was required so I opted for the place that was closest to Wartburg Theological Seminary (which didn’t seem that logical at the time).  I chose a nursing home in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  I just wanted to get my CPE over with; there were no night duties, no weekends and I had a place to stay.  Each week I’d leave Monday morning at 4:00 a.m. and return on Friday after work.

Working with elderly?  No problem.  My parents had raised us in a community and church that was predominantly crowned with glory, ahem, gray haired nobility.  From the time of the novelty of our birth, my brother, sister and I had been parcelled out to homes of various baby sitters so we were comfortable with conversing with those much older than we.  But working in a nursing home, that’s a much different story.

Most of the people that arrive in a nursing home are not there by their own accord.  Either they’ve become ill or unable, and their children have forced them into their cells, I mean rooms; or, the hospital convinces them that they are no longer able to support themselves at home.  Their home has become the enemy: the place where they raised their children, lived with their spouses, collected the dust of memories – this place is no longer available to them.  They are allowed to bring a nice recliner, perhaps, and a quilt they made fifty years ago.  The rest of it is put on the garage sale or divided between children like vultures hovering over roadkill. 

Perhaps I’m being harsh, but there is no greater damage that occurs to families when they squabble over things, whether knick knacks or Great Great Grandfather Vernon’s rocking chair.  The one who is hurting the most, the aged mother or father being confined and condemned to a foul smelling place, is left largely out of the equation.  Power of Attorney means Power of Division.  So, the elderly leper is left to sleep his or her days away interrupted by meals and sporadic games of Bingo.

I met Katherine at Bingo.  In the first few weeks of working at the nursing home (or ‘assisted living facility’ as they are called in all political correctness), I had been encouraged to interact with residents (another word I despised for some illogical reasons) or ‘inmates’ as Katherine called them.  In her wheel chair, Katherine relaxed, almost melted, into the plastic where she had sat every day.  I asked if I could sit next to her and she looked up at me through Coke bottle glasses.  Her eyes had that watery look like her eyeballs were perpetually swimming in tears. 

“Suit yourself,” she said with the typical raspy voice of the aged, “But don’t touch my cards.” 

A friendship was born.

Roughly once per day I made my way to Katherine’s ‘cell’ where we could talk, laugh, share stories of life or sometimes she would even have me play the piano for her.  It would be expected that I’d push her wheelchair.  She never asked, but she sat on that chair as if it were the throne of England.  Proud and short she sat, her legs covered by a blanket she had crocheted countless decades ago. 

One afternoon I played piano for her and as she sat to my right amidst the plastic Easter Lilies and faux palms, a tear slid down one of her cheeks.  At first she was embarrassed, but then she recovered quickly when she noticed that I had noticed.  Waving a wrinkled hand at me she said with trembling voice, “Don’t you worry about this eighty-eight year old lady.  She’s just leaking at the seams.” 

I stopped playing.  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

Pausing for a moment, she motioned for me to sit next to her wheelchair.  After capturing my eyes for a moment, she pulled back the blanket from her legs. 

She was a double amputee.  I had never noticed and never asked.

“When did that happen?” I asked after getting my bearings.  “I mean, what happened.”

Katherine covered the stumps quickly so as no other ‘inmate’ would notice.  “I’m diabetic.  They’ve been taking parts of me for years.  Pretty soon alls that I’ll have left is my heart and my head.  I’m not sure they’re worth taking.”  She coughed out a harsh laugh.  “Reid, I’m dying,” she said at last.  “I’m not sure how I feel about that, but anything is better than this,” she punctuated the statement by patting her stumps.

“It’s hard being without your legs, isn’t it?” I asked from a very youthful, inexperienced perspective.

“Not that you’d know,” she responded, “but it’s not the lack of legs that bothers me, it’s the lack of visitors.  As soon as my legs came off, my extended family stopped coming.  After a while, even my children stopped visiting.  Sure, they’d call or send a card; sometimes flowers would be delivered.  But to them, I think, I’m already dead.  They just want the mother, or sister, or aunt, or friend that used to be around thirty years ago.  But I’m not that person anymore.”

I nodded my head.  It was all I could do.

“They act as if what I’ve got is catchy.  Infections, I think that’s the word.  Not the diabetes, but old age.  They act as if when they come near me, they’ll catch my old age.  That’s the worst of it.  Not dying, but dying alone.”

Katherine died two weeks after that conversation.  She was alone when she died.

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[1] From the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.  Notice the name of the society is all about ‘aesthetics’ – looking better.