an old man and a hard day

I met an old man in the aids hospice one afternoon. I prayed for him and asked if he wanted lotion on his feet as he began to tell me his story. He explained that his wife was from the city and he from the country. Now there’s even more of a difference between the rural and urban cultures in South Africa than America. So this man tells me that his wife worked at times in the city and would travel there often. He was a trusting man he said with disappointment across his face. He called himself a trusting and foolish man.

His wife had multiple affairs in the city and contracted HIV. Then she gave it to him. And now he was in a hospice slowly leaving. He did nothing wrong. He was faithful. He was a simple man in a rural town like my own hometown, and he trusted his wife to be his wife. And she gave him an incurable virus. She killed him.

He didn’t seem angry anymore. His bitterness had turned into disappointment and shame. His sadness made him tired. And I’m sad I don’t remember his name.

The time I spent in the Dream Center wasn’t always hopeful. It gave me the glasses to see the human condition when bleak. And I didn’t like it. It was hard enough to go home after throwing a pizza party with some 25 year olds and hearing a girl say she knew God was reaching out for her. But when we would visit people with no hope, people with shame that covered their lives and their words and their reasons and their selves, well, its just hard to shake it off or know how to feel. Some days were like this.