Modern society greatly compounds this problem of a sense of place, for it has no natural “place” for sick people. We put them out of sight, behind the institutional walls of hospitals and nursing homes. We make them lie in beds, with nothing to occupy them but the remote control devices that operate the television sets. They live according to other people’s schedules, not their own: a nurse wakes them up, the hospital decides when to feed them, visitors drop by, a nurse turns out the light at night. (For this reason,many patients who welcome visitors prefer that they call first before dropping by—it gives them more a feeling of control over their schedule.)
I have made a kind of study of card racks, sometimes visiting new drug stores and card shops just to browse. The cards for sick people fall into distinct categories: schmaltzy cards with pictures of flowers and treacly poems, racy cards with messages about all the wild parties the recipient is missing, sincere cards with a solemn expression of sympathy, clever cards illustrated by New Yorker cartoonists. All have the same implicit message, expressed in their title: “get-well cards.”
One card has on the cover, “Get well soon,” and then inside, “otherwise somebody might steal your job.” Another says, “Everybody hopes you feel better soon, except me,” and inside, “I hope you feel better right now!” “This is no time to be sick,” says one of Boynton’s hippos from a hospital bed, “the weekend’s coming up.” What complaint could I have against these clever expressions of sympathy? The subtle, underlying message: You are out of commission, useless.You don’t fit, at work, at parties. You are missing out. You are not OK. Only get well, and then you can rejoin life. My friends in the Make Today Count group, none of whom will likely get well, impressed upon me that something as innocuous as a greeting card can deepen the devastating sense of feeling out of place, with no valid role in life. I sometimes dream of producing my own line of get-well cards. I already have an idea for the first one. The cover would have huge letters, perhaps with fireworks in the background, spelling out CONGRATULATIONS!!! Inside, this message: “. . . to the 98 trillion cells in your body that are still working smoothly and efficiently.”
I would look for ways to communicate the message that a sick person is not a sick person, but rather a person of worth and value who happens to have some bodily parts that are not functioning well.
Philip Yancey, Where is God When It Hurts (1990), p155
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