Mr Elsey C. Larry

A
nurse took the tired, anxious Marine to the bedside of an old man.

"Your son is here," she said
to the old man.  She had to repeat the words several times before the
patient’s eyes opened.

Heavily sedated because of the pain of
his heart attack, he dimly saw the young uniformed Marine standing outside
the oxygen tent. He reached out his hand. The Marine wrapped his toughened
fingers around the old man’s limp ones, squeezing a message of love and
encouragement. The nurse brought a chair so that the Marine could sit
beside the bed. All through the night the young Marine sat there in the poorly
lighted ward, holding the old man’s hand and offering him words of
love and strength.

Occasionally, the nurse suggested that
the Marine move away and rest awhile. He refused. Whenever the nurse came
into the ward, the Marine was oblivious of her and of the night noises of
the hospital - the clanking of the oxygen tank, the laughter of the night
staff members exchanging greetings, the cries and moans of the other
patients.

Now and then she heard him say a few
gentle words. The dying man said nothing, only held tightly to his son all
through the night. Along towards dawn, the old man died. The Marine released
the now lifeless hand he had been holding and went to tell the nurse. While she
did what she had to do, he waited. Finally, she returned. She started
to offer words of sympathy, but the Marine interrupted her.

"Who was that man?" he
asked.

The nurse was startled, "He was
your father," she said.

"No, he wasn’t," the Marine
replied. "I never saw him before in my life."

"Then why didn’t you say
something when I took you to him?"

"I knew right away there had been
a mistake, but I also knew he needed his son, and his son just wasn’t
here. When I realized that he was too sick to tell whether or not I was
his son, knowing how much he needed me, I stayed."

The next time someone needs
you, just be there. Stay.

WE ARE NOT HUMAN BEINGS GOING THROUGH A TEMPORARY SPIRITUAL
EXPERIENCE. WE ARE SPIRITUAL BEINGS GOING THROUGH
A TEMPORARY HUMAN EXPERIENCE.

What you leave behind is not what is
engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of
others." Pericles