sat beside the bed of a dear friend a few days ago. Well into his eighties,

he resides in a convalescent center.

have watched his health decline over the past several years, but I remember

him when he was a spry gentleman, quite active, who could easily take

care of himself. Now he is unable to get out of bed by himself a place

where he now spends almost all of his time. His skin is wrinkled with

age and patched with discolorations, rashes, and various sores.

spent about 45 minutes with my friend and the entire time I was there,

another resident on the same floor lay in her room and yelled over and

over, "Help me, help me, help me." Her mind had long since failed

to serve her properly and she could not be consoled. The halls smelled

of medicine and even death. Weekly, beds there are emptied as residents

pass away. It is a frightening place, I would imagine, to anyone who isn't

accustomed to the destructive nature of our years.

remember as a child going to visit my great-grandmother who lived in an

ancient gothic structure, a place called "The Gorge," so named

because of its location, tucked away in a forest valley. Bare light bulbs

hung from the ceiling in the residents' rooms and incapacitated elderly

men and women lined the hallways in wheel chairs. Occasionally, they would

reach out at me as I walked by. They scared me to death and so did the

facility, but my mother and father insisted that my great-grandmother

would want to see me. They were right, of course.

This

may seem like an odd topic for a column about children, but as I sat with

my friend, listening to him tell stories of World War II, and I watched

him drift in and out of sleep, I saw something in him that many people

would miss.

did not see his gray hair or his tired and frail body. I saw my friend

whom I love dearly, much as one might see a mother or father, remembering

them as they used to be, and seeing far beyond the wretchedness that might

frighten one who could not know any better. My compassion for my friend

made it impossible for his condition to frighten me away.

There

is most definitely a lesson here. My children occasionally accompany me

when I visit friends in the hospital or elderly people who are unable

to leave their homes. I do not force them to go, but sometimes it takes

some encouragement. Like me when I was their age, the foreign nature of

a hospital or convalescent center with its sights, sounds, and smells,

as well as the enigma of age, dying, and death, can be frightening to

them.

Yet

when they go with me, they see that the elderly do love to see children,

just like my mother told me. Yet I want my children to learn more than

this. Not only do I want them to learn to give of themselves occasionally,

but I also want them to learn to see beyond appearances.

want them to learn to look at other people with a compassionate eye, one

that sees beyond wrinkles, frailness, and sickness. If they can learn

to do that, they can also learn to see beyond skin color, religious differences,

and lifestyle choices. By going with me to visit the aged, like my friend,

my children have the opportunity to learn from them.

It

is amazing that my friend, incapable of caring for himself and sometimes

even finding it difficult to keep his mind focused on a simple conversation

this man who will most likely never see my children as adults can still

be their teacher.

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