Our Own Awakening

We made an unexpected gift yesterday.  We’re not counting it towards our weekly fifty-two (and it was more than fifty-two, actually).  But I am going to write about it here, because an experience like the one we had Sunday afternoon is just too beautiful not to commemorate, to share.

The story starts with a movie we watched Saturday night.  Giver Boy was up late grading papers.  He was on one of our couches with a stack of blue books nestled beside him; I was on the other couch, wrapped in a blanket and browsing the streaming selection on Netflix.  A very typical night for us.  Usually I’ll head right for the seventh season of Grey’s Anatomy (I’m in the home stretch of getting caught up, finally!), but that night I was in more of a movie mood.  Netflix knows I’m a sucker for an emotional experience; the “sentimental” and “tearjerker” categories were high up in my list of recommendations.  A movie I hadn’t noticed there before caught my eye: Awakenings.  I was almost certain I’d seen it years ago, but it’d been so long that I didn’t at all remember the story.  Robin Williams and Robert De Niro circa 1990 sounded perfect.

I don’t mean to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie, but suffice to say it’s based on a true story of a neurologist who endeavored to awaken a group of post-encephalitic patients at a “chronic hospital” from their long-term catatonia in the late 1960s.  Robin Williams was said doctor (Dr. Malcolm Sayer), and Robert De Niro is one of his patients (Leonard Lowe).  An experimental drug does indeed wake Leonard from his state, some 30 years after he “fell asleep” as a boy.  I won’t say what happens next, except that the story, alas, does not end there.

Woven into the background of the film are poignant details about life inside a residential psychiatric treatment setting.  As someone with a significant family history of mental illness, I find that glimpses into such places are especially heart-wrenching.  I cried many tears, and wrestled with much existential angst over the whys of mental illness, in the hours that followed the movie’s conclusion.  People with severe psychiatric conditions are often hidden away in such residential settings, and because we don’t see these people in our day-to-day lives it is easy to forget they exist.  When reminded by a movie like Awakenings, my heart ached for a way to do something, to somehow make this reality more tolerable for those affected (up to and including myself).

I woke up on Sunday morning with puffy, dark circles under both eyes.  Giver Boy and I had overslept for church, but we’d already decided the day before that we would spend the afternoon and evening doing something fun with the kids.  Quality family time is hard to come by during football season, but we’d managed to carve out the hours and we were determined to make it happen.

We were blessed with perfect weather: It was in the mid-60s yesterday and gloriously sunny and breezy.  We decided we’d check out one of the many small farms in a neighboring town.  When we moved here last year, we were dismayed to find that many of these farms charged entry fees (a little different from what we were used to in our previous city), so we skipped visiting any of them last fall.  This time, however, we were just happy to have the resource nearby–and we tried to look at the entry fee as a way to support a family of hardworking local farmers.

The kids had a blast.  We fed chickens, goats, and sheep.  We took a hayride through a “haunted forest.”  We even ran into a couple of our kids’ friends from their new homerooms, and exchanged numbers with their friendly parents.

And then, when it came time to leave, something utterly remarkable happened.  We were climbing a grassy hill to our parked minivan when a group of adults approached on our left.  After exchanging smiles with a few of them, it became clear that this was a group of adults with developmental disabilities.  They were accompanied by two chaperones, one of whom approached the table that flanked the entry gate and threw up his hands in frustration.  I thought I overheard him asking something about the entry fee, and then walking away.

Giver Boy and I stopped mid-stride and just looked at each other as we eavesdropped.  It was hard to tell what was going on, but moments later the group was headed back up the hill and piling back into their van, which happened to be parked just next to ours.

And here is what is so amazing about this giving project of ours–it took us all of a split second to come to the same conclusion.

“Is it fifty-two dollars?” Giver Boy asked me.  I tried to count the group as they were getting back into the van.  I thought maybe there were ten of them.  The entry fee was $6 per adult.  “More,” I told him.  “Sixty.”

“Well, do we have it?”

We checked our wallets.  He had two twenties, and I had one.  Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up.  We had exactly $60 between us.

Giver Boy ran down to the woman collecting money at the gate, and then ran back up the hill to stop the group from leaving.  They were literally in the van with the engine started.  I stood in the middle of the parking field, holding the kids’ hands and pretty much holding back tears.

The group got back out of the van and started walking down the field.  One of the chaperones was looking at us incredulously.  He told us they were from a state facility, that they were told to take the group on a day trip but that they hadn’t expected the entry fee.  As Giver Boy assured him that we wanted to help, a number of the men and women came to me to shake my hand and talk to me and the kids.  I am going to be really honest with you, and tell you that I’d have been pretty uncomfortable with that in the past.  Even with so many family members who’ve suffered with mental illness, I can still be guilty of allowing someone’s atypical behavior or speech to keep me at a distance, both physically and emotionally.  It was 100% thanks to the movie we’d watched the night before that I was able to see each and every one of them as worthy of the same respect, courtesy and love I would extend to any other human being.  It’s not that I didn’t know this was true before, but it was like I could suddenly really see that, afresh, with new eyes and an open heart.

I have never felt more spiritually overcome by the significance of one of our gifts.  Here we had been awakened.  And even though my eyes were still puffy from the tears I’d cried the night before, it was like God Himself was giving me a way to turn that sadness into something beautiful.

I hope this story encourages you (as it encouraged me) to keep your eyes open.  Stay alert; stay awake.  A moment like this might be waiting for you, and as Giver Boy and I can tell you, hearts full–you wouldn’t want to miss it.

Tagged as: humanity