Cloyd

Cloyd is a gentleman I met while at work in a long-term care facility. He was an extraordinary man.

Cloyd

Today is really no different than any other day. I hurry back and forth to finish my work, complete tasks that seem to be never ending. My mind though is somewhere else. I am sure that I will succumb to the troubles in my life and worse the ones in my head. Leaving me thinking how life is hard and it is long and especially in the hours I spend here it is difficult to find the goodness I know must exist but stays hidden from me.

I see him there. He has been there at least a hundred times before. He spends his days up and down these halls searching I think for the same thing that has hidden itself from me. He wheels himself from hall to hall .. room to room .. on the wheels that support him for his legs no longer will. Today though he has found one thing he searches for .. a sunbeam .. a glimmer of the outside. It seems he doesn't even notice the hustle around him ... the beeping ... the people .. the crying and the screams that come from down the hall. This is his home now and it appears most days he has made peace with that. This day I sit with him ... hold his hand and listen. As I do the screaming and the beeping seem to fade. He begins to talk and as I watch him I can see the man he used to be. His hands now are cracked and colored with age .. his hair grey .. his clothes in layers to try to warm him from the chill that cannot be warmed. But his eyes are still young and shine as he begins to tell me of his life before this place. His eyes close now and as he speaks he takes me there. In the town down the street. .. the moment his life started with her. He remembers the day the time and as he continues on I am certain he must see every detail ... a March day brisk..every cloud, every sound still there .. sealed into his memory. Time has taken many things but this moment it will not. Sixty-eight years with her. Eight years without her. With each tear that falls the profoundness of this moment strikes me. All those years ... all that life ... all the troubles that must have come and gone. What he speaks of and aches for most is the love that in an instant slipped away. There in I find the significance of the sunbeam ... the searching.

All those troubles that just minutes ago were holding me down mean nothing now. The place he has taken me to I can see clearly that it is the love of another that sustains us in this place. Not the job .. not the money ... not the battles that come and go but the love.

Inside this sunbeam we share ... I see it ... what he grieves for ... and I search for ... a love that time has stood still for. He speaks of why God cannot take him to be with his love ... and I ... silently thank God for this man and for the lesson I have learned.

He wheels away thanking me for my time and as he goes I know that from time to time I will stand in this place and let the sun shine down on me and remember the day this man shared his soul with me and helped to fill mine.