“Lift Me Up And Lift Me Down”

“What do you think about the nun?” I asked the senior social worker over lunch at the nursing home.

“Instead of changing for the better, most old people like her have longer to get better at what they’re bad at,” she said, smiling, trying to be a little funny.

So cynical.

But, I suppose it makes sense for some old people who have hoped that time alone will change something they want changed. To me that’s like hoping by doing something that doesn’t work long enough will change something that doesn’t work.

I finished my sandwich and checked back the nursing station. No surprise that the nun was still there, chanting, “Lift me up, lift me down,” raising and lowering her hands, punctuating her supplication.

Who was she talking to?

The nurses ignored her.

At first I thought maybe she was uncomfortable and wanted to be readjusted in her wheelchair. Her hard starched white habit looked heavy and board stiff.

But she didn’t seem, “uncomfortable” (if there’s such a thing as being “comfortable” while sitting all day long in a wheelchair).

Who can be 90 years old, with a bad heart, and severe vascular disease, and do what she did for hours at a time? I’d be lucky to be able to take my own pills brush what teeth remained.

Her ardor was transfixing. It was clear she was tapped into a pillar of strength.

“Lift me up, lift me down.”

The thick double stitched cotton sleeves exposed just the tips of her pale fingertips. And the habit’s board-hard starched headpiece with a cut out for her face to press so hard on her forehead and cheeks and chin that her face jutted out at you, unapologetically, with a stare that was neither from ere nor thee.

“Lift me up, lift me down.”

Her head’s coif was meant to be unrevealing. But the cut out for her face allowed her free expression.

“Lift me up, lift me down.” With the first phrase she’d lift her arms from her lap to shoulder height, then hold them up there for an instant (like for the time of a comma) and then with the second phrase she’d lower them to her lap.

“Lift me up, lift me down.”

It was impolite of me to stare but I couldn’t help myself. I could see that she was doing much more than just talking to herself. She seemed entirely locked on expecting some response, some intervention, by saying what was most important to her, something her life had taught her, believing that something would happen by repeating the only thing worth remembering because she heard herself saying it.

“Lift me up, lift me down.”

It was easy to get caught up in it.

Were the nurses immune to getting caught up in it?

Her cadence was remarkable. It was slower than what you’d associate with distress or panic. It was more focused than the perseverative behaviors of the other demented patients on what was known as, “The Long Term Unit,” all of whose charts beamed out on their covers, “Do Not Resuscitate.”

“Lift me up, lift me down.”

Miracles do happen you know.

“Do Not Resuscitate,” was in my mom’s chart.

“Lift me up, lift me down.”

The last thing my 88 year old mom whispered before she died was, “I’m waiting for my parents to come and get me.”

She would see them.

“Lift me up, lift me down.”

The nun could have been calling out to my parents for all I knew.

Or, to the moon.

Passion shows us how to see.

“Lift me up, lift me down.”

Please get me out of this damn place?

“Lift me up, lift me down,” I heard myself saying it.