Profiles in Resilience #2
Limping and waddling his way toward me, his cheek-to-cheek smile greets me long before his aching body arrives. Wayne is one of my heroes. Disease and life experience have sabotaged his health, but he continues to expose his jumbled collection of teeth with a Texas sized smile.
“I’m soo glad to see yew. I was afraid I would miss yew; I thawt yew had already left,” he says taking twice the normal time to pronounce these words and drawing out each of the vowels. In fact, Wayne adds a few extra syllables to every word with his signature charm.
He shifts uneasily from side to side, quickly relieving the pressure from his bad right knee, then from his sore left big toe. He often uses a cane to balance his round 300 pound frame as he hobbles about spreading hope and joy. Though born and raised in the hardened land and culture of rural West Texas, Wayne expresses love easily. He has never failed to end a conversation with “I love you.” For a man with such a poor existence, he certainly is grateful. With a large frame and a dark mustache, he resembles some happier reincarnation of Ralph Cramden from The Honeymooners. But when he cracks that loose-toothed grin, good will emanates all about him.
Wayne lives on the poor side of town in a decent retirement home across from the single mom-with-too-many-kids-and-no-dads-around apartment community. Trash clings to the thorn weeds in the vacant lot adjacent to the retirement home and across from the apartments. In fact, the litter is so thick that I filled one entire trash bag in less than 10 minutes and only cleaned up about a fifth of the lot. Where do all of these plastic grocery bags come from anyway? Surely this many people don’t just let them blow in the wind…but evidently so.
Glass, broken beer bottles, and other unexpected debris cover the ground. The apartment community is dirty…and no doubt a frightening place for children. Though the kids play and ride their bikes in the daytime, their mothers lock them in at night lest they fall prey to the thugs who hang in the parking lots by night cursing, fighting, or attempting to self-medicate their way through brutal realities of hard living. Once, a two-year old girl was run over by a car in the parking lot on a Friday night. I happened to be riding with a policeman that night for a class project, and we responded to the call. Tragic.
Wayne greets me as I load him into my car and we take off for a nice meal at a local greasy spoon. He regales me with stories of yesteryear, and my heart is full. Though his mobility and skills are limited, Wayne excels in encouragement. He works the phones, encouraging friends, making reminder calls for a church outreach program to those local children, and checking on the sick and lonely. Technically, Wayne is sick and lonely, but he transcends that small description with large living.
In the midst of these unideal circumstances, Wayne lives. Not just taking up residence or merely existing, but living! Wayne spreads joy everywhere he goes, because he takes interest in people. No matter how poor, educated, or sullen, Wayne loves and encourages indiscriminately. Faith, hope, and love follow in his wake. Beauty found in one of the most unlikely corners of the world.
(Wayne passed away over 10 years ago. I spoke at his funeral in Abilene, Texas. This post appeared in a 2008 edition of Weekly Inspiration.)
Worth Repeating
Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.
-Steve Maraboli
