Hope in an Unlikely Place

It was Saturday morning, and I had been invited to go with some friends of mine from the church to volunteer at the hospice in Vladivostok. Like everything else here, I had no idea what to expect, as we drove to the hospice. It was in a poor part of town, behind the vast, sprawling Chinese Market. The building was small, off to the side of the regular hospital. The outside was quite dreary, with grey paint peeling in great swaths. The front doors hung open. "Few people come here," said one of my friends. "Even the people in the church don't want to come. They'll come to the door, but they won't go in. They say they aren't ready. They don't want to see the suffering."

As we entered the building, the first thing I noticed was a man, old and thin, sitting on the floor, his back to the wall.  He had striking blue eyes that followed us as we moved. He was dressed in a mismatched sweatsuit, and huge boots. He simply sat there and watched us as we came in and passed by him. I saw only one hallway, and all the rooms opened up off of it. The hall floor was rotting out, and they had put down boards to walk on, so you didn't sink too much. The paint on the inside was no better than on the outside. 

Forty people live there, and there are four nurses on duty at any one time. My friends told me of how the nurses' salaries get cut regularly. The four nurses came out to meet us. They were smiling, upbeat people, but looked tired. They were happy to see us, and we quickly set to work. I started out making open-faced sandwiches, which were fish liver paste on stale bread. I took them around to the rooms. 

Each room was roughly twenty feet by fifteen feet. There were four beds per room, and they were basic cots. That was it: nothing else, not even any personal items. Just a grimy window and bare walls. The residents lay in their beds, flat on their backs, all day. Most of them were too weak to sit up by themselves. They were helped to sit up by the nurses to eat their meals, then laid back down again, and that's it. That is their life. There are no televisions to watch, there are no radios to listen to, there are no pictures to look at. It is hard to read books while lying down, and family members rarely visit.

Lunch that day was described as "the usual." It was a watery soup with buckwheat and a few shreds of chicken, with bread, a banana and, for those who could stomach more, a plate of cabbage mush. I had never fed anyone before, and it was a humbling experience. My charge was Baba Zoya. She was too weak to even spoon soup into her mouth, or hold the cup while she drank. She was silent as she ate, sometimes demanding bread, or more water. The time of day she probably looked forward to the most seemed a burden for her. She lay back down afterwards, and I stayed a while. I tried to start a conversation, but she wasn't very talkative. She stared at the ceiling. I described what was outside the window for her, and talked about my home. I asked her about her family, and her childhood. There was an ornament, a snowman, sitting on the table. I held it up for her, and she turned her head to look at it. I will never forget the emptiness of her eyes. 

You could feel it in every room, and every corner of that place: the emptiness. Some of them had faith, and for them it was the only thing they had. And to think that they were once just like me: young and full of dreams. But now they were here, living a half-life. Simply existing, with their thoughts always in the past, because the present was four bare walls and there was simply no future to dream about. At one point I stopped outside a closed door. Through the window I saw the upper half of a pale face peeping out. Her hair was the color of the snow outside, and her eyes the color of the ice on the ocean. We just watched each other. "Her mind has been going lately, so they've started locking the door," said my friend, coming down the hall. "But she has faith, she believes in God." 

However, there was one man who lay on his cot in room number two, who was different. He was younger, maybe mid-forties. My friends introduced me to him, and I sat with him while he ate. His name is Peter. Peter had once worked in the Russian Navy, as a chief engineer on a ship. On November 5th, 1995, his ship was transporting cargo between Magadan and Anchorage. The sea was rough, and Peter was standing near an open hold when the ship hit a wave and he lost his balance. He fell straight through to the bottom of the hold, shattering his elbow, and cracking his skull. His shipmates were able to make contact with the U.S. Coast Guard, which flew a helicopter out to the ship. Peter was flown to Anchorage, where he lay for three months, in a coma and on lung support. His skull was operated on there, but nobody knew if he would ever wake up. 

By a miracle, he did wake up, and was immediately taken to Washington state, where he had a second surgery on his head at a Tacoma hospital. From there, he went to Puyallup, where his elbow was operated on. He lived in Puyallup for a year and a half, undergoing physical therapy. He was in a wheelchair and his left arm was severely crippled. His wife came to live with him in Puyallup. After the year and a half, he returned to Russia, at which time his wife left him and he was left in the care of his mother. Unfortunately, his mother recently needed surgery and it was discovered she has cancer. With no one to take care of him, he was put in the hospice. 

While his story is incredibly sad, and seemingly hopeless, Peter is very much alive and optimistic. Perhaps the most incredible thing about this is how much he remembers. He remembers the names of every hospital he had been in, every doctor who operated on him. He remembers the names of every nurse and every physical therapist. He remembers his home address, what he did, the people he met. He remembers everything. "I have lost contact with them," he told me. "I just want to say thank you. I want to let them know I am well; that my arm is better and I am alive! I want to say that I haven't forgotten them. I want to say thank you." 

He wants to say thank you. He said this to me while he lay helpless, in an old cot, in a bare room, in a rotting building, not knowing if he will ever leave. "I was born in Vladivostok, but reborn in Anchorage," he told me. What hope he has to be able to say that, to be thankful for life! He is still thankful, even after everything has been lost: his family and his job. His very body is broken. He is just glad to be alive, even though his life is more of an existence than anything else. 

I will never forget Peter, nor his character and courage. The courage to be at rock bottom, facing an impossible future, and yet filled with gratitude.