I'm on a roll...

... Two blog posts in less than a week.

People are so nice.

If I stop and think of all the nice things people do for me every day, I am overwhelmed by the thoughtfulness and generosity of the people I'm surrounded by. For example, this weekend my mom, dad, and brother came and helped me move all of my mounds of stuff to my parent's house. That same Saturday, one of my patients at work gave me a little box of chocolates as a Valentines Day gift. My roommate Red also got me a little something for Valentines Day. My sister is always sending thoughtful little notes and thank you's, and this V-Day she sent a little card from my nephew. It is always the little every day things that mean so much -- when you come home from an awful day at work and you get a little card in the mail, or your friends sit and listen to you whine incessantly.

It reminds me of a story I recently read in the book My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging by Rachel Naomi Remen, the author of Kitchen Table Wisdom. If you haven't read KTW, I HIGHLY recommend it. Anyway, here is a cut and paste version of the story (my book is packed away, so I had to pull this story from different websites) ...

Dr. Remen told a story about Molly, one of her former patients who had been hospitalized with fractures of both elbows. She had been in an automobile accident as she was driving to the airport in a city 2,000 miles away from her home. When she awoke in the hospital, her arms were encased in rigid casts that went from her shoulders to her wrists. She could become dangerously ill if she inadvertently ate the wrong things. It was critical that her food needs were addressed while she was in the hospital.

Soon after she was settled in her bed, a dietician took more than an hour to document carefully her unusual food needs. "The questions that she asked were so thoughtful," Molly told Dr. Remen, "she really knew her stuff. In all of these years, no one has ever asked me some of those questions or understood so quickly and completely how things were with me. I was really impressed."

Within a few hours, special food was ordered for Molly. Three times a day, this food was served to her by food service staff that brought it to her bedside, put it on her bed table, and left it on a tray. Then they left. The first time this happened, she told Dr. Remen, "I just sat there looking at the food unable to feed myself. I was certain that someone would come in to help me, but no one did. After a while, the woman in the next bed noticed that I could not eat. Trailing her own IV lines, she got out of bed and fed me my dinner." That same thing happened at every meal in the 4 days that Molly was in the hospital without the use of her arms. No one on the staff ever offered to feed her. Day after day, the right food would be bought in and the patient in the next bed would feed it to her.

In Hell people are seated at a table overflowing with delicious food. But they have splints on their elbows and so they cannot reach their mouths with their spoons. They sit through eternity experiencing a terrible hunger in the midst of abundance. In Heaven people are also seated at a table overflowing with delicious food. They, too, have splints on their elbows and cannot reach their mouths. But, in Heaven, people use their spoons to feed one another. Perhaps Hell is always of our own making. In the end, the difference between Heaven and Hell may only be that in Hell, people have forgotten how to bless one another.