Flashback: The beauty of saying nothing.

Originally posted July 3, 2013

I lost a very dear friend of mine today. A friend who had never been able to say a sentence to me, yet who meant so much.

Imre was my ward buddy. We were in hospital together when my brain first broke well over a year ago now, he came in the night before me having suffered a massive stroke. Over the 10 days I was there the doctors went from telling his family to not expect him to survive the night, to not expect that he would ever walk again.

Imre was an angel in so many ways – not only because his amazing family adopted me and gave me the support I needed in the demonstrable absence of my own support network, but because his constant smiling face and waving from the bed opposite is probably the main thing that got me through those 10 days.

Because thinking about his welfare and what he needed – because he couldn’t ask for it or push the button for the nurse himself – allowed me a distraction that prevented me from slipping in to any kind of depression or despair about my own broken brain.

And because he, unable to walk, or talk, or eat, or do much except smile and wave at me with his one remaining good hand, was this ever present message of ‘See? It could be worse. You’re doing ok.’

Imre was one of the good hearts, the pure spirits. When he smiled he lit up the world. And he smiled often. Unable to talk because of the stroke which took so much of the basic function we take for granted, he was remarkably adept at communicating feeling and expression, particularly when he was so very happy to see you.

He was always happy to see you. He always had a wave and a smile. He’d sit in his wheelchair in the coffee shop at the aged care home, because he could see all the comings and goings from the door from there, and wave and smile at *everybody*. He added so much happiness and joy to the world.

I know I should be just a little bit happy that he is released from the frustrating prison of a body that won’t do what it should. But I am enormously sad that I won’t get to see his face beam that beautiful smile just because I came to say hi again.

Perhaps it is because he couldn’t say anything that I was given the honour of being able to see the pure beauty of his soul.

And it is to that pure, beautiful soul that I say thank you for keeping me alive and sane.