Plumbline Author: Charles Adams
Date: September 2, 2005
Topic: David and Helmut

The Veteran’s Administration nursing home in Paramus, New Jersey is not up to the standards of the Crown Pointe facility currently under construction in Sioux Center…although I’ve witnessed much more dismal places. My wife and I have visited there regularly now for the past three years, during week-long returns to Saddle Brook, New Jersey. Saddle Brook is where we both grew up, and the town in which my mother-in-law continues to live in the house that she has lived in for the past fifty years. My father-in-law, who turns 85 in September, moved into the VA nursing home almost four years ago. His Parkinson’s disease had advanced sufficiently that he was unable to be cared for at home.

For the past few years we’ve traveled to New Jersey in early August, and during the short week that we are there, we make a number of visits to the nursing home to see my father-in-law. Fred is a big guy and getting bigger. His usual gregariousness has been tempered by the Parkinson’s disease and perhaps a bit by the immobility which pretty much confines him to a wheelchair. One thing he does enjoy is eating. And so it’s common for us to visit with him at his table, at mealtime in the nursing home cafeteria.

There are three other men at Fred’s table. Across from Fred sits a man whose name I do not know. He sits in silence. When his food arrives there is something within him that recognizes it and slowly moves his aged hands and lips so that he, with some difficulty, manages to feed himself. But he never communicates with the other three men at the table or with those of us who visit.

But this Plumbline is about the other two men at Fred’s table, David and Helmut. Since they sit 90 degrees from Fred around the small, round table, whenever I pull in a chair next to my father-in-law, I’m also sitting next to either David or Helmut. And I’ve done that with increasing delight, on a number of occasions, during the last two years. For David and Helmut, both in conversation and in their countenance, bear the image of their Creator in ways that I find worthy of esteem and respect—despite the brokenness that they bear in their bodies and their surroundings.

David is an African-American engineer, and we’ve talked on a couple of occasions about his career. Educated in electrical engineering, he has done a lot of work in control systems, both in private industry and in the military. His service in the Air Force is what has qualified him for a place in the V.A. nursing home, but he likes to talk more about the guidance systems on which he worked while in industry, or the short stint that he served as a college professor. He didn’t enjoy the classroom very much, and I think I understand why. You see, David, beside the Ph.D. in electrical engineering, has a kind of affable but gentle dignity; something, I fear, one must forego if one is to successfully entertain college students.

But David has retained that gentle dignity, and, when I listen to him speak I can’t help but wonder, “Why is he here in this nursing home?” His cordiality, verbal eloquence, and poise betray the reality of the diabetes that has taken his legs, and which hangs over his head like the sword of Damocles. It also makes it easy to forget that here is a man who grew up and was educated before the civil rights movement. Yet he shows not the slightest signs of bitterness or abasement, too often the results of struggling to live humanly in a dehumanizing, racist society. Instead, when I look at and listen to David I’m reminded of the Word of the Lord near the end of the sixth day of creation, when he created mankind in his image, looked upon all that he had made, and said, “It is very good.”

Helmut sits across the table from David, on Fred’s left. He’s the only one of the four who can walk to the table and sit in an ordinary chair. The first thing that strikes you about Helmut is his sense of humor. His words are often seasoned with a comic irony enriched by his intelligence, education, and years as a professional musician. Born and raised in Germany, Helmut learned to become a composer of music and to gain expertise in playing the woodwind instruments. He left Germany for the United States shortly after Hitler came into power, and he served for a time in the U.S. military.

This past August I had a most fascinating conversation with Helmut. Unlike Fred, Helmut doesn’t enjoy his food and eats very little of it. But motivated by some internal sense of stewardship and frugality, he hates to see it go to waste. And so he is often trying to give his food away to his tablemates or to visitors like myself. After unsuccessfully attempting to give me a half-pint of milk, he turned to me and asked about my profession. I told him that I was an engineer and an educator. And then I added, “who is very interested in philosophy.” At the word “philosophy” his eyes lit up. I had connected with his experiences in the arts. “Philosophy!” he repeated, “do you know who my favorite philosopher is?” Nineteenth century German philosophy immediately came to my mind and I responded, “I’ll bet it’s Friedrich Nietzsche.” “That’s right!” he responded. And then he asked me if I had read Nietzsche’s book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Well, I had. And so followed a wonderful conversation about how Hitler had misread Nietzsche, and about how Helmut thought that Nietzsche was an optimistic philosopher despite the often misanthropic character of his writings.

After that conversation with Helmut, as I turned back to my father-and-law and my wife, I couldn’t help but ask myself again, why is this man here in a nursing home? The answer came a few minutes later when Helmut turned to me and asked, “What is your profession?” We repeated the same conversation about philosophy and Friedrich Nietzsche as if it had never occurred a few moments before. Helmut has lost his short term memory and therefore needs assistance in caring for himself with respect to the ordinary moment-to-moment necessities of life.

Shortly after this conversation with Helmut my wife and I were back in the outside world listening to reports of casualties in Iraq; and, just two days later, battling the madness of bumper-to-bumper traffic as we drove on Route 80, through Gary, Indiana, on our way back to Sioux Center. Reflecting on all that, I came to the conclusion that the Kingdom of God is often more present in places we least expect to find it. For although the men in the Paramus V.A. nursing home are seriously impaired in different ways, they still bear the image of their Creator. And, at times, that image shines very brightly.

Having the opportunity to see past the impairments of David and Helmut, to catch glimpses of their wisdom, humor, and dignity, I was able to see a fifth man sitting at the table with them. A man who in his first official public appearance said, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”    ^{(See footnote 1)}  And then I remembered some other words of the prophet from whom he was quoting on that occasion: “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”    ^{(See footnote 2)} 

For Plumbline, I’m Charles Adams.
Dean of the Natural Sciences, Dordt College