KELLY BOWMAN - THE QUALITY OF A MENSCH

KELLY BOWMAN

You are helpless. You are sick. You may be scared. You are in hospital. Your body and your destiny are in the hands of the Creator and many strangers shifting past your life through the hours: Doctors, nurses, social workers, housekeepers, visitors bearing gifts and shouting back and forth as if the hospital were their hotel, passersby, volunteers with kind hearts and techs coming to figure out computer troubles at the desk. 

In the night, there are the "orderlies" who change the diapers for those unfortunate enough to have passed through that dark door where nothing they do can return their control of self or their sense of personal dignity. You worry that it could happen to you too. Hang on tight.

When you look at me, you see an old lady. I hardly recognize myself in the mirror now.  But what you don't see - if you are young and not trained - is that, within this fragile form, inside the drab, flabby flesh is a 35 year old vibrant, feisty woman. Not every Senior is senile. Many of us are fully alive and unchanged except for a loss of healthy cells and Nature that is determined that we must not keep going and going and going. Damn Nature!

In the night there are staff members laughing and talking out loud - even using filthy language. They behave as if we who are supposed to sleep are deaf and stupid. They assume we are alone and at their mercy. But more about that later. This essay is about a visitor - someone quite remarkable.

While I was hospitalized earlier this month, an unusual figure came before me out of the darkness, hardly visible at all there but for some very soft back lighting. His name is Kelly Bowman. He is an orderly at the hospital. Very tall and very dark, if Kelly is Irish, you would never guess. I might not recognize him in daylight, but I will never forget Kelly in the night

He comes into the room softly. He speaks to my 88 year old roommate, Pauline, and to me in gentle tones. He is respectful. He is comforting and courteous, and warm and deferential in a manner that reminded me of my gentleman husband, Cliff Carter who, though never wealthy, was always a man of admirable qualities. 

Kelly didn't have to do anything to "serve" me. There wasn't anything I needed. His presence was a balm. With a few casual words, I recognized a gentleman clearly raised to be a comfort to others. Kelly didn't have to do a thing for me except - "TO BE".

Kelly Bowman is simply called "an orderly". If only the world had millions like him.