Mind Set Go

Have you ever met someone whose very presence instantly changed your life?  I suppose everyone we meet fits that category if you let them.  A meeting I had last week has left me in awe.

Sitting in a hotel breakfast room, there was this guy.  He was talking really loudly to his iPad and all the people on the iPad, little Zoom boxes of people, seemed to be talking at once.  It went on for a long time.  Just this guy, talking in some undiscernible (to us) foreign language, really loudly and with utmost excitement—full of energy.  The thought crossed my mind that in this country a lot of people attempting to talk or eat in peace in a breakfast room in a hotel would find all that volume and energy and fervor annoying and downright rude.  For some reason we didn’t—even though it almost felt wrong not to.

Another thought crossed my mind, “Isn’t it strange that he not only isn’t “bothering” me, I wonder who he is, where he is from and what he is speaking.”  Playing a quick game of cribbage at our breakfast table next to his, we even discussed it, almost having to shout to get a word in edgewise to each other.  “What language is that,” we wondered? 

It so happened that when we got up to refresh our drinks, the man was also up.  I didn’t realize that he was there near us at the drink station because behind us, the excited reunion chatter was still emerging loud and strong from his iPad left on the table.  And so we asked him, “What language is that you are speaking?  Where are you from?”

His is an amazing story.  An amazing story that some would say ended that day.  I would say otherwise as here I write, preserving it for you to find and peruse. 

The young middle-aged man was speaking Filipino.  He worked on a container ship.  And at some point when his ship neared the city we were near, he began to feel really badly.  Abdominal pain.  He came into port and I believe he was sent to what is one of the best hospitals in the nation and was diagnosed:  Stage 4 Lymphoma.  He had already started treatment, was doing quite well and was given hope that there was a real chance that could be cured.

That was his family on the iPad.  They were extremely worried about him.  He said, “You see, in the Philippines, this (diagnosis) would be a death sentence.”  He said that he kept trying to reassure them.  He told me that he felt really good.  “Look at me,” he said with arms outstretched.  Soon he introduced us to his family over the iPad as “people he had just met.”  They all waved, and we waved back.  The chatter had stopped for a moment as we looked at each other on the other side of the world using technology we all seem to take for granted now.

He told us that he knew no one in this country.  He was alone.  The social worker had sent him to this hotel, but he would prefer one with a kitchenette.  He was not accustomed to this food and would like to be able to prepare some of his own.  Saying goodbye, he went back to his perch at the table.  I alerted the lady who works in the breakfast room that he was, in a sense, a very special guy, uniting with his family.  I had come to know her in the weeks previously, frequenting the same locale.  Our eyes met and instantly we both had a common mission: this guy needed love.  I wondered what I could do by the next week or that morning, whenever we met again, if ever we did.  Perhaps he would get a new place to stay, however—one with a little kitchenette?  And I’d never see him again?  Which hospital was he undergoing treatment?  Could I track him down?

Back in my room I needed to go on with my day, but my thoughts kept returning to him.  I needed to give someone a ride, and I did.  But as soon as I got back again, I couldn’t stop thinking about what I could do.  I had met a Filipino American 40 years ago at school, and we had reunited online maybe six years ago.  Maybe he would know someone who could give him a connection?  But I found that I only have my friend’s email address and not his phone number.  I couldn’t text him for any ideas or suggestions. 

I googled Filipino churches in the area, and I found a few, but they appeared to only be open for a few hours on Sundays.  There was a club, too, listed, and a local university had a Filipino organization.  I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t meant to be, at least not that day.  When I went downstairs, I wondered if I would see him in passing, and I told the guy at the front desk, that the guy from the Philippines was undergoing treatment, something he had probably already heard.

What I hadn’t done was share this website.  I also did not share my own story of cancer treatment with him.  He didn’t need to hear my story.  At least not yet, I presumed.

And then, I never saw him again.  I worried about him.  Prayed and meditated.  Thought of his family and their worry. 

You’d think that the story ended there, but it didn’t.  No one’s does.  Life isn’t that way.

You see, I checked back in to the hotel this week, and I saw the lady in the breakfast room the next day.  Yesterday.  Someone was at the table we’d been frequenting, so I sat in the very seat where he was just the week before.  There was no iPad.  No energetic, happy man.  No family all talking at once.  It seemed dimly serene.  And that’s when she told me. 

Later on, the day I had met him, he had set out to walk to get some food.  Not very far away, just next door are some grocery stores—a very simple, easy walk away, even on the same side of the street.  “Yes.  Yes,” I urged the breakfast worker.  “Go on.”  And then she said, “It was terrible.  Ambulances came.  He had a heart attack.  He fell and hit his head.  It was bad.”  And she knew no more other than they were working on him, providing CPR.  His heart had stopped.  The ambulances had brought him to the hospital.

I was heartbroken.  I am heartbroken.  I am at a loss for words.

Oh, and she said, “He was bringing dinosaurs for his children.”

Later, I stopped at the front desk.  One receptionist told me that he had survived but that was the last he had heard.  But the other man at the desk knew more.  The container ship company had contacted them on Monday, just a couple of days previously.  The man passed away.

Mourning has a way of making things about us.  Those we knew and perhaps even just meet, are okay.  We mourn for our loss. 

Heart doesn’t stop even when one stops beating.  We share this earth, and we share each other.  Go make your own joyful noise and share it with others.  Life is really, really good and well worth sharing.  It’s what we can and should do. 

I will never look at a dinosaur the same way.