Golf, God, and nursing homes part two

My aunt Helen, age 90, is a prayer warrior. You’d never know it by looking at her. She’s hunched with age, has short, sandy-colored hair, a long, narrow face, and what she describes as Bugs Bunny teeth. But make no mistake, she packs power in her slender frame.
As the youngest in my dad’s family, she grew up poor but with a fierce work ethic inherited from her parents who managed to raise five healthy children during the Depression and Dust Bowl years.
When family finances finally freed up enough for her to take piano lessons, she fell in love with music which led to her long career as an elementary school music teacher.
When my grandmother was alive, I often visited her and Aunt Helen during my summer breaks and became the silent leg of their prayer triangle. They prayed out loud for everything from our family’s temporal and eternal welfare to the shingles desperately needed on Grandma’s roof.
I soon found that prayer wasn’t a boxed, timed, or formal convention. We could be in the middle of a normal conversation when suddenly my aunt would address the unseen divine presence; make a heartfelt petition on behalf of a friend, family member, or the world at large; and resume our conversation seamlessly.
I have to admit at first her way of praying startled me, but after all these years I’ve grown more accustomed to it. And they weren’t just empty words. After retirement, she traveled with a group to Communist China and distributed Bibles surreptitiously, thriving on the danger and the cause.
When she recently fell, fracturing seven bones in her shoulder and arm, she was transported to the hospital in Plainville, Kansas where she relished the attention as much as the nutritious food. She adored the aides, nurses, doctors, and physical therapists and, of course, prayed for them.
All too soon, however, her funding ran out and she had to be transferred to the Redbud Nursing Home. She hated it there she told me when I called, her voice dropping to a stage whisper as she gave example after example of the unresponsive staff, deplorable food, and nosey roommate.
Then, after a long pause, her voice broke as she said, “I trust God with my life even more than I trust myself. I’m not afraid to die, but I’ll stay here until I’ve finished whatever God still has in mind for me to do.”
A few weeks later, Ted and I attended our granddaughter’s high school graduation and a posh luncheon set on the edge of a private golf course in St. George. The next morning we headed toward Escalante. This leg of our journey was my birthday trip, something I looked forward to every year.
When we arrived at our destination, however, we discovered Escalante was in the midst of the Wild Potato Days celebration and bursting with tourists. We managed to get a very expensive room for the night, but all the motels were booked for the following day.
So after a good night’s sleep, we drove out of town, looking for two rock art sites: the One Hundred Hands pictograph panel and the Warrior and Shaman petroglyph panel.
The trailhead, not far from Paria River and Highway 12, was easy to find. The trail itself was beautiful with a backdrop of red cliffs, but grew more difficult to follow as we went along.
We finally spotted the one hundred white handprints painted above us in an alcove. Why so many hands dipped in white paint and pressed against the walls of a high cliff cave? Although an enigma, it seemed clear the site held great significance for the Ancestral Puebloans.
Later, I looked up possible meanings in the book, Rock Art Symbols by Alex Patterson who quotes Polly Schaafsma. She suggests that handprints “may have been left as signatures of prayer requests or made in the act of obtaining power.”
After a brief hike across the slickrock we found the Warrior and Shaman Panel with the warrior hunting an animal and the shamans, in their distinctive headdresses, lined up along the cliff.
We scrutinized the images then headed back to the 4-Runner, photographing cacti blossoms along the path.
On our way home along the Burr Trail, I thought about the ancient art panels and a different kind of warrior, my aunt, who had made her own supplication and then surrendered her will to God.
However, miraculously, she didn’t remain stuck in pain and misery. Her doctor scheduled an appointment in a nearby city for surgery to pin her shoulder and arm. After her friend took her to the appointment, she jubilantly texted me that the operation wasn’t necessary.
“When the doctor examined the X-rays,” Aunt Helen told me the next day, her voice breaking, this time with awe, “he said the bones are healing on their own. Everyone’s positive it’s a miracle.”
A different kind of miracle occurred when I called a few weeks ago. “I love it here now,” Aunt Helen said. “I’m on the waiting list to move into an assisted living facility, but I’ve made so many wonderful friends, I don’t want to ever leave.”
With my auntie’s example before me, and another birthday come and gone, I continue to ponder the question the poet, Mary Oliver asks, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / With your one wild and precious life?”