Above All the Noise

From the movie, The Savages:
Jon Savage: Dad's not the one that has a problem with the Valley View. There's nothing wrong with Dad's situation. Dad's situation is fine. He's never gonna adjust to it if we keep yanking him outta there. And, actually, this upward mobility fixation of yours, it's counterproductive and, frankly, pretty selfish. Because it's not about Dad, it's about you and your guilt. That's what these places prey upon.
Wendy Savage: I happen to think it's nicer here.
Jon Savage: Of course you do, because you are the consumer they want to target. You are the guilty demographic. The landscaping, the neighborhoods of care; they're not for the residents, they're for the relatives. People like you and me who don't want to admit to what's really going on here.
Wendy Savage: Which is what, Jon?
Jon Savage: People are dying, Wendy! Right inside that beautiful building right now, it's a ***!!!* horror show! And all this wellness propaganda and the landscaping, it's just there to obscure the miserable fact that people die! And death is gaseous and gruesome and it's filled with shit and piss and rotten stink!


Above all the noise; the beeping of the instruments, the inflating and deflating of the blood pressure cuff, the alarm of the IV, we could be heard arguing.

“You’re bothering mom, so stop it. Mom, are we bothering you?”
“No, it’s better than the silence.”

As my mom lay next to us in ICU, we argued about her cat. The cat I’d let out of the house.
“You should care more about that cat. It’s mom’s cat, so you should care more about it because she cares for it.” Really, it wasn’t about the cat. It was about expectations. My sisters' expectations for me. My expectations for me. Perhaps, as John Piper says, many ‘words to the wind.’

“I can’t believe you said that. I’m still angry at you and I’m going to stay angry at you and not talk to you,” Denise said in staccato.
“So, you’re going to just keep that anger inside and let it eat you up? Rather than trying to deal with it?”
“Yes.”

In the waiting room, every chair has a bag, a coat, an umbrella on it. No place to sit, to rest, to wait. A man and a woman enter, dark complected, stretched and haggard, like someone had pulled a piece of gum at both ends, leaving the middle near breaking. We ask them if we can move some of the stuff aside so we can sit down. We’d walked into a family drama; as their loved one was fading away in the Intensive Care ward.

Two other people enter. “You should go in now. He’s doing that funny thing where he puts his hands up to his head and says, Meshugana.” One leaves, one comes in. The guy and girl sit on the couch, unfazed by our presence.

“I’d be willing to have dinner every night with mom if it would help.”

“I don’t think she wants to move. She doesn’t know the valley. Everyone’s come by to see him. Except that flippin sister of his.”
“She’d be close to Gelsons, Ventura Boulevard, lots of places to shop. I think it would be good for her.”
“She’s not used to it. She won’t drive. She won’t like it. She won’t leave the house. I can’t visit her all the time.”

The sickness or death of a loved one scratches us raw. Forced to deal with the present, sometimes past history and ongoing emotion erupt and intercede uninvited. Above all the noise we must listen for what’s important. Allowing for words to the wind, we must trust to those things that anchor our souls. As someone has said, “We fled to take hold of the hope offered to us (that we ) might be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”