I finally looked up the word 'apostate'. I'll always remember how dumb the nursing assistant looked, when Mom declared that as her religion. (Of course, I didn't know what it meant, either. But then, I knew my mom, so that gave me a clue.)
The woman just stood there, staring first at my mom, and then at her clipboard; I realize now she had to check a box, and she had no idea which one.
"Does that, like, make you Evangelical?" she asked, her pencil poised.
"No, I guess that would make me apostical," Mom said, chuckling.
The nursing assistant finally marked something -- I wonder what? And then asked her her food preferences.
The next morning, Mom had to go to the Intensive Care Unit.
After a few days, a middle-aged woman came by and stared at me significantly through the room's glass wall. She was wearing an old, sack-like dress (I remember the shoulder pads had metastasized forwards). I finally went out and asked her what she wanted.
She said, "I'm the minister on duty this weekend, and I'm told your mother may need to speak with me."
"Who told you that?"
"They give me a list of patients in the ICU before I make my rounds." She waved a piece of paper, like it was an entry ticket.
"I don't think she'd be interested."
"Are you sure? The relationship with God is a very personal one."
"My mother can't speak right now."
She looked at me as if I were a bouncer blocking her entrance into some exclusive nightclub.
"I can offer words of comfort, then."
When you're in the ICU for awhile, things get weird. This woman seemed so confident of her god-given abilities, I almost believed her.
I went in and stood over my mother, while the minister stared at us expectantly. Mom's eyes were closed so tightly, I knew she wasn't asleep. I looked back at the minister, and she nodded.
"Mom, do you want to speak to a minister?"
She opened her eyes instantly and shook her head no. To me, it was deafening.
"I'm sorry. I'll tell her to go away. She just comes and visits everyone. It doesn't mean anything."
I went back out. "No."
"Maybe later?"
"No. I should have told you, my mother's an apostate."
It seems when a straight-out No doesn't work, a weird reply often does. The word seemed to puncture the woman's messianic armour, revealing the baggy panty-hose underneath.
"Well, then. May God bless you." Her thin, colorless lips tightened, as she added an unspoken, "because I certainly can't."
I felt like I was watching a smack-down match between her conceit and her belief. In any case, she grabbed both and marched away.
Labels: bible, character sketch, christianity, hospitals, language, painful, religion, words
