* * Making impressions on strangers

My wife and I take in strays. People, that is. We are on a couple of Internet-based hosting services where we open our home to travelers of all sorts and give them a place to stay for the night. Some are just passing through, some stay a few days. We get to know some very well and remain friends. Some leave, and in some case take, a real impression. With Sally, apparently I made a real impression.

Sally is not her real name, as you’ll understand by the sensitive nature of our communication that I’m going to share with you. She is an emergency room worker in one the south’s largest city’s biggest and most active hospital. She was headed north to attend the funeral of her grandfather and to visit for a few days with her father. We don’t host many women travelers, especially traveling alone. Sally is in her mid-thirties, a heavy woman with a thick shock of dark hair frequently drooping over her eyes. Much of it was colored crimson red.

She arrived with us late on a week-night, so I was almost ready for bed when she walked in, carrying only a small backpack for luggage. The next morning I had a late meeting so I didn’t have to leave the house right away. We sat and chatted about her life, her work, her fun, and her aspirations.

She loved her job, being on the edge of life and death. She loved knowing that she helped people survive horrific accidents. But she was clearly a lonely soul. She’d been married before, but her husband later proved that he was more sexually interested in other men, so he left her. Her parents were divorced when she was young, and she didn’t have a good relationship with either of them.

We talked about the racism she sees in her southern city. We talked about traffic and camping and my books. Her father, who is my age, is already in a nursing home, wasting away. She has a bright smile, but her face was washed by sadness.

We ask all our visitors to leave some thoughts behind in a guest book. Truthfully, I haven’t even looked yet at what Sally wrote. But I did get this message via email the evening of her departure.

“Hey Michael,

 “I wanted to say thank you again for letting me stay in your home. I wanted to write more in your guest book, but I didn't quite know what to say, so I decided on the rest of the drive to write it in an email.

“In my job, I watch people die every day. I throw myself and my heart into saving strangers’ lives, even when I may think they don't want, or even deserve, my efforts. Sometimes it is the most rewarding feeling and sometimes losing someone and watching their families wretch and sob is the most helpless and sorrowful feeling.

“The truth is, I'm terrified of death. Not my own, but of those I love. No one in my family has ever died. I've never been close to anyone in my family. They don't know anything about me really. I know death will happen, as this is life, however I have this constant nagging feeling of panic that soon I will be the one sobbing and wretching. I have totally compartmentalized my feelings about death, thinking of it as a bucket of sad feelings that I am allowed to empty only handfuls at a time by doing kind and good things every chance I get.

“This year has been a terrible year. I know I had expressed my feelings about my father's situation to you this morning, but the truth is that it consumes me. There is no enjoyment without a twinge of guilt once I remember my father's suffering. I think about how terrible it will be tomorrow when I take him from the nursing home where he is wasting away to his own father's funeral. Not how terrible it will be for me, but how terrible it will be for him. I am honestly relieved of my grandfather's passing. He was suffering, and he was ready.

“My point in all of this is that I needed to sleep on your couch. I needed to wake up and have coffee and a half a bagel and talk about socialized healthcare, and Appalachian music, and pet your fluffy dogs. It may seem silly to you, or maybe it doesn't. But it helped me and I am grateful that you and Jane chose to allow me into your home. It may not have been the preferred couch-surfing guest experience for you both, but I just wanted you to know that it gave me comfort.

“Sincerely, Sally”

It’s nice to know that in this season of good cheer, we were able to offer something of real value to a stranger.