I Saw the Same Man Twice the Other Day

On a recent road trip, I stayed a night at a budget motel on a busy city thoroughfare. As I entered, I noticed that the window in my room looked out at an assisted living facility across the street. While getting settled, I glanced up and noticed an older gentleman in a wheelchair slowly making his way down to the curb across the street. I peeked back up a few times while unpacking, and he was still there, parked on the sidewalk, just watching the cars roll by with a bottle of water next to him. I looked out again as I was getting ready to walk to dinner, just in time to see him wheeling himself back towards his room.

And I thought, how sad. To feel so confined by those four tight walls of his, that watching city traffic is an improvement. With no friends or family coming to visit, he’d rather choke on fumes and catch fleeting glimpses of people he might have known in another life but never will. Wishing for the quality and quantity of genuine human contact and connection he once had but never dreamt of losing.

Then I saw him do the same thing the next morning.

And I thought, how inspiring. Instead of sitting in his room, cooped up all day, he comes out to the curb and stays connected to the world in between visits from family and friends. It’s hardly mountain air, but it’s outside. Then he sits under the shade of a tree on the sidewalk and watches human faces of all countenances rush or walk by. Getting microdoses of humanity, ten minutes at a time. I’ll bet that’s a nice little “people” bridge for him in between time spent with the grandkids or the other cotton tops at the VFW.

I saw the same man twice the other day, but I’ll never know which man I saw.