My Husband is now in the room!

Hello everyone!  Praise the Lord!

I was at the hospice volunteering to visit patients and family members, and to do anything else that needed to be done or anything that the nurses needed.  In those early years I would work all day and then go in the evening to hospice.

            It was a nice calm evening and I had just taken a break after visiting a patient.  I sometime take a break in the garden, one of our break rooms or chatting with the nurses at one of our three nurse’s stations.  It’s important to take an emotional break between patient visits!

             I walked only one room away from the second story nurse’s station and there was a ninety-year-old lady laying quietly in bed.  She looked at me and made a small smile.  I walked in and introduced myself as a hospice volunteer.

            She smiled and nodded at me. I asked her nicely if she would like a visit. She readily agreed for some company. There was a wooden stool by the bed, so I pull it up and gently sat next to her. This lovely ninety-year-old lady had a soft voice so I sat close to her so she would not have to strain her voice. 

            When I asked her if she was from Houston, Texas, she replied yes, but that she was originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In order to create a small bond, I replied that I had been to Philadelphia a few times myself. I had been there three times, once just passing through, and twice for work.

            She told me that she was born and raised in Philadelphia into a prominent Philadelphia family.  Her family was extremely wealthy and well connected in the city and the state.

            She was a young seventeen-year-old girl in nineteen-thirty-seven when she meets a young nineteen-year-old German immigrant.  Throughout the nineteen thirties, there was a large migration of German Jews and non-Jews alike leaving Nazi Germany for a safer environment in the United States.

           

In the summer of nineteen-thirty-seven she fell madly in love with this young handsome 

German man!  Both of them became so happy together!  This was the beginning of a love story that would last a lifetime! 

            Even though they were madly in love with each other, her family was not madly in love with him!  They were very wealthy and powerful and they wanted to become more so.  They wanted to marry their daughter off to another wealthy and powerful family in the state to increase their power.

            This love story was the last thing that her family wanted.  When he proposed marriage to her, her family intervened and said no to any relationship, and especially no to a marriage!  This was not in their plans!

            Both of them were devastated about the rejection!  But all they could think of was the love that they shared together.  They determined that they would stay together no matter what anyone else thought about it.  They were in love and that was all that mattered to them!

            In order to stay together they had to make a big decision.  So, they went to the train station and got on the midnight train going to Chicago, Illinois! 

            There in Chicago they got married and started their life together!  Her husband was a butcher and found work in a local butcher shop and she made a home and started a family.

            Her husband had a brother who went to Houston, Texas.  After five years in Chicago, they also went to Houston and started their own butcher shop in nearby Bellaire, Texas, close to Houston.  In those days there was a small German community in the area.

            She then told me that her wealthy family back in Philadelphia never did forgive her and did not reconcile with her.  She had been banished!  She did not receive any kind of an inheritance from them.

            But with a smile on her face from ear to ear, she did not mind.  She was always very content to be the wife of the local butcher, her lover, her husband!

            As I was talking with her and receiving this beautiful story, she had a radiant glow around her face, and a smile from ear to ear!  I had thought that maybe my hair was sticking up during our visit.  I had even a few times brushed my hair in order to correct the imagined problem.

            I then asked her about her husband.  She said with a soft voice that he had died a year ago.  She said that she was devastated by his death.  But she still had this huge smile!  I thought that it was kind of strange she was still smiling!

            She then looked at me with loving eye’s that were starting to mist over.  And she said, “When I arrived here, he meet me here!”  I asked who meet you?  She said my husband!  He is here now in the room and is waiting for me! I asked her if that was why she was smiling so big.  She told me that feeling his presence is a wonderful pleasure and she eager to be in his arms again! 

            I could not see anyone else in the room, but she could see him.  I have never seen a more joyful person then this ninety-year-old lady laying in this bed!

            The next week when I returned to the hospice to volunteer, I asked the nursing staff about this lady.  I was told that she had passed away a few days previously.  Then I knew that the last breath of life that she breathed in, was the first breathe in her lover’s arms.  They are now spending eternity together!

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Brother Roop