"There's no one in room 260," I inform the nurse. I had been roaming a sprawling skilled nursing facility for fifteen minutes looking for my newest patient, Beryl. I had already spent another ten minutes looking for parking. I began to think I would have to make it a short visit; if I ever found her.

"Have you tried the cafeteria? It is lunchtime," the same nurse says without looking up. 

Wondering why she didn't lead with that, I get directions back through the maze to a location that, much to my annoyance, is 20 feet from the building entrance. 

When I arrive at the cafeteria, I look over the sea of patients and tersely ask the first person I see in scrubs if Beryl is here. The lady immediately points to an older woman wearing a purple dress, a bright yellow turban cap, and black Ray-ban sunglasses. She is just sitting in her wheelchair, frowning, staring into space, and not eating. I steel myself for resistance as I head over. When I introduce myself, I am as cheery as possible.

"Hi, Beryl? I'm Michael from Hospice. I'm here to —"

She snaps her head up and exclaims in frustration, "Finally! You don't know how long I've been waiting." 

I look at my phone. Am I late? Did I get the time wrong? 

"I didn't realize that you would be in the cafeteria. I —"

"Where else would I be?"

Sitting next to her, I said, "I didn't know it was lunchtime." In my defense, I arrived at 11 o'clock. I decided to drop it and see what happens next. When patients are combative, it is usually best to ease up and let them drive the conversation.

Beryl looks at me like I have a lobster growing out of my ear. And then she stares straight ahead for a couple minutes. I impulsively look at my phone and wonder how I will get through the next two hours. When I look up, Beryl is staring at me with expectation. 

"I'm hungry. We don't have all day," she exclaims.

And then I realize the miscommunication. "Oh, I don't work here. I'm not specifically here to feed you. I'm from Hospice. I'm a Volunteer here to spend time with you. We can chat, read, pray, draw, go for a stroll..."

Beryl considers this and then turns back to me and asks in a more placating tone, "Can you help me eat? Is there a rule against that?" 

I look around. The staff is all pretty busy; some feed two residents at once. I see my opening, and I reach for the hand sanitizer as I explain, "Yeah, actually, I think there is a rule that says I'm not allowed to feed patients. But here's the thing. I always follow the rules like don't speed, don't cheat, don't steal. But I scoff at rules like, don't feed a hungry person the food right in front of them."

As I reach for the fork, Beryl smiles broadly and declaims, "I like that!"

After lunch, I take Beryl for a spin around the facility. She says hello to practically everyone we pass in the halls. It is as if she was out for a promenade in the park during Victorian times. She takes extra time with a few fellow patients and inquires after their health and family visits. She introduces me to everyone she stops to converse with. We arrive at her room an hour later and have a lengthy introductory conversation. I learn that Beryl was born in Cuba and grew up in Jamaica. I get a brief history of her life and how she came to this facility. At one point, we alight on the topic of tropical fruit. I tell her that I spent five years of my life in the tropics of Central America. We excitedly compare all the exotic fruits we have each enjoyed while in the tropics. This is typical first-visit chit-chat. Eventually, this peters out, and I ask what she likes to read.

"I used to love to read my bible and stories, mysteries, but now I don't read anymore." She is nostalgic about this. She points to a dresser beside her bed with a foot-high stack of books. A closer inspection reveals this to be a stack of 8 bibles!

"Do you ever swear on this stack of bibles," I joke? 

Beryl laughs, "Not if I can avoid it."

"Why don't you read anymore?"

"My eyes. The diabetes has ruined my eyes, and I lost my glasses. I think someone took those glasses."

I sigh. Stuff goes missing all the time in these facilities.

"I'm sorry about your glasses. I can read to you out loud if you like."

"You can do that?"

"Sure! I can read from one of your bibles, or I have this book of poetry from Shel Silverstein," I say as I rummage through my bag. I pull the book out, and she seems interested, so I start to read. 

Beryl loves the funny and often nonsensical poems; she delights in the whimsical line drawings (which she can barely see if I hold the book up close to her face.) We laugh out loud often, and, being that we are situated just outside her room, I can see the smiles on the faces of passersby. Throughout our time together, she often asked me to read this book of poetry. I see that Beryl has a real sense of the absurd, especially as it applies to life.

At the end of our first visit, Beryl thanks me profusely and beams. 

"When will you visit again? Will you," she asks with a worried look.

"Absolutely! How about next Thursday? And I'll meet you in the cafeteria at 11:00 and help you eat." 

Beryl agrees enthusiastically.

The end of every visit is like this. She thanked me with a voice that was a little louder, with the slightest hitch in her throat. And she asked me when she would see me next.

Over the next nine months, I see Beryl almost every week for two to four hours. She loves to talk about everything, but most of all, she often speaks with what I interpret wrongly, except once, as pride in many aspects of her life accomplishments. 

Her descriptions of her life trajectory are fascinating and as inspiring an immigrant story as you can find. She emigrated from Jamaica to the USA, a black woman with little financial means. But she brought an abundance of fierce determination, incisive intelligence, and willingness to work hard. 

On one occasion, she relates her career story. 

"After I looked after those children in Cincinnati for a couple years, I moved to California because I had a cousin out here, and she had some caregiving work for me."

"Did you look after more children?"

"I helped sick people." 

I would find out later from Beryl that she rose to be a nursing assistant at Stanford Hospital. This is an incredible upwardly mobile path for a person with her humble beginnings. When I asked her if she was proud of her career accomplishments, she looked at me like I did not understand. "I just thank the Lord that I could care for all those people." 

This matter-of-fact modesty and crediting of her faith were to be repeated again and again. For Beryl, it was about what she could do for others in faith.

Beryl accomplished many other things in her life that are, frankly, amazing. She hardly ever sees these many things the same way as me. I want to compliment her, but she seems to see it more as a requisite due to her faith. She thinks of all this as a sign of God's blessing. And I later realized that her perception was not that she was underprivileged because she was a poor, black woman. On the contrary, she sees herself as rich in gifts and believes that as long as she stretched and leveraged those gifts as far as she possibly could, well then, that was all that was required or of concern. The rest was in the Lord's capable hands.

For instance, Beryl tells me that back in the early sixties, she bought her first house in East Palo Alto. She paid cash for this house. A decade or so later, she sold that house. With the injection of her own money, she bought a home in Menlo Park, one of the most affluent communities in the SF Bay Area. She paid cash for this house as well. 

When I ask her about securing a loan to buy property, Beryl only shrugs and says that that was simply not possible for her at that time. I took this to mean that, as a black woman, no bank would talk to her, even with an income. When I pressed her about this, she said, "What does it matter? I got my house." I think that she believes the best revenge was getting what she wanted no matter what walls had been erected. When it comes to her house in Menlo Park, she is eager to tell me about the many fruit trees she planted. 

Before I leave that day, I tell Beryl that I am impressed with the life she built for herself from so little. 

Again, she thanked me but disagreed with my assessment, saying, "I did my best and left the rest to The Lord."

Beryl is determined and, though a kind and generous person, can be stern and stick up for herself. One great and, I think, hilarious example of this ability comes to light during a visit with her. I reach for the phone to call her son, something we occasionally do. And I can not find the phone.

"Where's the phone, Beryl?"

"Oh, they took it away from me."

"Who took it away!"

"The nurses," she says, like it was customary to have phone privileges suspended.

I was getting miffed. Some of the caretakers in this place need to question their suitability as caregivers. "Why the hell would they do that, Beryl?"

She got a little indignant and said, "Well, it was three in the morning, and my chest hurt, and I thought I was having a heart attack, and I buzzed the night nurse. Nobody came for over an hour, and I pressed the button a lot, and I know it was ringing because the bell is just around the corner."

"OK, but I don't see what this has to do with your phone."

She looked at me with a mix of mischievousness and indignation. "I really thought I was sick. So, I called 911, and the ambulance came, and the paramedics insisted on checking me. The nurses got really mad."

I laugh heartily, and Beryl joins me. 

"Serves them right," I say.

We descended into giggling that lasted for several minutes. 

When we stop laughing, she says, "I planned on asking you to get my phone back for me."

I nod and excuse myself to the administrative office to insist that the phone be returned. It shows up in Beryl's room an hour later. 

I am proud that this kind and gentle woman knows her rights and is not afraid to stand up for them. And in that way, she is standing up for other elderly nursing home residents who, sometimes, have their needs neglected and concerns ignored.

There are days when Beryl is not thrilled to be in a nursing home, but she always acknowledges that it is the best situation for her. Despite the usual grievances (lost items and caretakers who did not measure up to her standards - which I am sure are high), she can always find beauty and poetry in her situation. She often spontaneously says, "You know, I have the best room in this place."

Her room is a little brighter and more inviting than other resident rooms I entered. But maybe that is because Beryl makes it so with her strong personality and ever-present faith.

We are taking a stroll (she is in her wheelchair) through the courtyard one day and discover the most beautiful cluster of Calla Lilies tucked away in a corner. These have huge flowers and lush green leaves. The long protruding stamens are the perfect light yellow counterpoint. 

Beryl immediately became wistful for her garden in Menlo Park. 

"I loved spending time with the flowers, the bees, and even the dirt. You know how good dirt, for planting, smells and feels a certain way? Feels right?"

We spend half an hour taking in the exquisite beauty of those Calla Lillies and talking about our gardening experiences. Every time we stroll around the grounds of the facility after that, we stop to meditate on those radiant flowers. And if Beryl or I am having a bad day, being with those flowers makes things a little better. Her smile gets a little wider, and her laugh comes easier after visiting those flowers. 

As Beryl's time winds down, she speaks more often of her family, especially her living, extended family. Her stories clearly show that she is the family's matriarch and is deeply loved and respected. Beryl gives me an entire genealogical history and descriptions of everyone. In this way, she begins her life review and meditates on what she values most, family. Her family is her legacy, something she considers much more substantial than all her other accomplishments.

"Beryl, I do believe you are proud of your family," I say with a smile and a chuckle.

She looks me over and nods her head. "Yes, I am proud of all my family. And you know why?"

"Why?"

"Because they are all good people. All people who are honest and kind and helpful to others," she says in her most serious tone. She nods to herself again and adds, "Yes. I am proud of all of them. Proud of their good. Happy for what they do. Thankful, yes, for all the good they will do."

There is a CNN political commentator named Van Jones, who, in the fall of 2016, floated the idea of a Love Army. The idea was to gather people who loved others without prejudice and selfishness to counter the negativity and meanness pervasive through the presidential election at the time. The Love Army notion pops into my head with Beryl's description of the goodness of her entire family. 

After describing the Love Army notion to Beryl, I say, "Beryl, I think you are a general." 

She laughs at this, but I continue to press, "A general who commands a Love Army."

She quiets, then nods, and says, "I think you are right. I like this. A Love Army, and I'm their leader." 

She continues to talk about her family with pride. 

These are some of our most profound conversations. There is a seriousness but also a feeling of finality that comes with it. It feels like a wrap-up, a conclusion to our many discussions, but I shrug this feeling off, not knowing that I would talk with Beryl only a couple more times. 

Beryl's decline is so slow and long that I barely notice. What I do register, I take to be the rollercoaster of old age and her various ailments. Perhaps it is that Beryl is so lively and talkative that I almost forget the reason I am assigned to her; because she is dying. In retrospect, there was more confusion, more complaints about stolen items, and less food consumed at mealtime as time went on. Though she often ate snacks brought by her son. I supposed she did not like the cafeteria food on those days. 

During my last few visits, Beryl eats from her bed because she is too weak to get up. She eats less and less each time I feed her till all she eats is a couple bites. After eating, she lays back, exhausted. Her agitation and confusion also get a lot worse. We call her son more often to calm her. 

The final time Beryl speaks to me, she is quieter than usual. She seems inwardly focused, and what she says makes little sense to me. She seems to be reliving earlier times in her life. I call her son, to let him know she is heading toward the threshold. We comfort each other. 

When I tell Beryl I have to leave, she brightens a little, looks right at me, and thanks me as genuinely as ever. She asked me to give her a hug, which she had never done before. She holds onto my arm and looks at me as I pull away, saying, "Be good." In retrospect, I realize this was the first and only time that she did not ask me to tell her when I would visit her next. 

I call her son and tell him about her state and that I feel it will not be long before she actively starts to die. I told him it might be a good idea to see her as soon as possible. This was more prophetic than I realized at the time. 

The week passed by without me thinking much of Beryl. I was busy getting my garden ready for spring, working on a class for a teen leadership group, and mentoring teens on a robotics team. I drive in to visit with Beryl a little less than a week later on Wednesday. 

When I enter her room, I find her sleeping peacefully. I stand by and watch her breathe for a few minutes and then decide I should wake her for her lunch that will be coming any minute. 

I call her name and pat her hand. Nothing.

I speak a little louder and pat her hand harder. Nothing.

I raise my voice to a shout and squeeze her hand. Nothing.

I run to get a nurse. The nurse tells me that she had been non-responsive, in a coma since Tuesday afternoon. Beryl is dying and only has a few more days left in this world.

The nursing staff told me that the previous day Beryl had been animated in the morning for the first time in weeks. She insisted on attending the cafeteria for lunch. She ate a full meal while speaking to any residents and staff who would listen. After lunch, she asked to be put back in her bed. A nurse tells me, "She said she wanted to go to sleep. So I helped her to bed and tucked her in. I checked in a few minutes later, and she was sound asleep. She did not wake up when we brought her dinner. She's been in a coma since then." 

For the next few days, I sit with Beryl at least once and sometimes twice a day for a couple hours. When I am not there, other hospice workers and nursing home staff sit vigil with her. This fulfills one of the most critical tenants of Hospice that no one dies alone. 

When I am with Beryl in those final days, I say a rosary, read out loud from her favorite bible and a poetry book that she liked, and speak softly to her. About half the time, I sit quietly, holding her hand, reflecting on her and her life. Then, on the fourth day, as I get up to leave, I notice that her breathing is more ragged and shallow, and she has become much paler than before. I understand it will not be long. There is a good chance she will die in the next 12 hours. 

I tuck her favorite bible under her arm and place the rosary around her hand. I lean over her, kiss her forehead, tell her I love her and leave. I stop at the doorway for only a few seconds to look at her once more, through tears I cannot stop. 

The following morning I am getting ready to go check on Beryl when I receive word from her son that she passed a few minutes earlier. 

It is 8:15am on March 13, 2022. Beryl left this world better off for all her 96 and a half years in it.

When I reflect on my short time with Beryl, I struggle to find a single central or unifying lesson that captures her spirit and what she taught me. 

There are so many learnings! 

Like, be grateful for fulfilling work that betters the world.

And be determined to make a better life for self and family despite obstacles.

And better the world by bettering the people around you.

And command a Love Army.

And keep the faith and trust in God.

And, be kind, but stick up for your rights.

And look for the beauty all around you.

And don't be afraid to get silly and revel in the absurd.

And use all your God-given gifts. 

And finally, if you can, relinquish life on your own terms. 

So many teachings …

Because of this, while I reflected deeply on my fulfilling but brief time with her, I struggled to find my title and theme of learning, the thing that was Beryl for me. 

A few days ago, I was looking through a book, and a Saint Francis of Assisi prayer card fluttered to my lap. My mother loved novena prayer cards, and undoubtedly this one belonged to her. In looking at it, I felt that my mother and Beryl were speaking to me because this novena prayer truly captures Beryl and what I learned from my time with her. And suddenly, I have my title and a unifying theme. 

This is the Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi. When I read it, an image of Beryl tending to those Calla Lilies forms in my mind. She works the soil, looks up, smiles, and waves to me.

PS: The other quotes in this article are all from passages loved by Beryl. She often asked me to copy them in big letters that her frail eyes could see.