The Joy Bank
by Alfonsina Betancourt
“My soul is very anxious to die soon.” Those words have hunt me for more than two decades.
I met Mrs. Elizabeth my senior year in college. I was working on my thesis, a documentary photography project that ended in an exhibit and book. It was called “Searching for the Soul”. For months I went several times a week to a retirement home to interview and photograph residents. My introductory question, because I thought something light would break the ice, was “What is the soul?” Yes, most residents did not find it very inviting at first. A natural shy person, I had a hard time establishing conversations with the residents at first. Many of them, confronted with the resistance to aging, hated having their pictures taken. Nevertheless, I came back everyday with prints to my improvised models. Some were grateful from the beginning, eager to share the photographs with their loved ones. Others were so self-conscious that they hated seeing their photos. One woman tore up a print with anger in front of my face. It took me almost three months for her to like her pictures but by the end, she was the one begging for one more photograph.
One afternoon, several residents were playing bingo in a social area, teenage volunteers calling numbers aloud. Some folks were sitting parallel to each other without talking, lost on the realm of their memories; a few men and women were absently minded precisely because they were in the process of losing their precious memories. As I walked around taking candids of the residents, I observed a woman in her nineties standing next to a column. She was thin, just like her hair that hit at her shoulders. A yellow headband with a tiny bow in the center on her head and a blue jacket that she hugged around her waist. Her grin…although partially toothless, was the shiniest, biggest, most extraordinary smile I have ever seen. I had to go talk to her.
“Excuse me, can I ask you a question…” I said timidly while I approached her, camera and notebook on hand.
Mrs. Elizabeth looked at me with her grayish eyes and her imprinted signature smile. I was not sure if she heard me. The sound of music and talks in the background made it hard to strike a two-way conversation, especially when hearing was a skill commonly reduced among the residents.
“I am not sure what you are asking me, but I will try to respond…My soul, my soul is very anxious to die soon.”
Mrs. Elizabeth said without losing a single ray of sun coming out of her smile. Judging by the way the room suddenly got lighter, I could swear golden beams extended from her body.
I was immediately drawn. Isn’t death suppose to make us unhappy? How come this woman was anxiously waiting for her last breath with such a big smile? The answer followed.
With her gray eyes lost in the wallpaper, Mrs. Elizabeth shared part of her life.
“My husband died eleven years ago. When my husband was dying he told me ‘Oh, Elizabeth! You’ve made my life,’ and I said ‘you made mine too.”
You are right if you suspect that was the moment tears swelled my eyes. She told me about her happy life with her husband of fifty-five years, how they always played music at home because both her parents, husband and kids were all musicians; how their two kids were born in New York City, and how she later got interested in Philosophy and Literature, becoming a teacher for years at Boston University. But there she was, surrounded by people on a retirement home, partially deaf, toothless, but the joy she experienced in her life did not become an arrow of sadness for what was lost on her later days, they became her constant source of joy.
Up until this day, Mrs. Elizabeth still remains one of the happiest, most joyful people I have ever encountered and I am grateful for that.
This year has been extra difficult and I know I am not alone on this sentiment. As I was on one of my meditative walks recently, I remembered Mrs. Elizabeth. My heart filled up immediately. She has had that effect since I met her: whenever I think about her I just can’t help myself but smile brightly and feel my chest expand. I assume she reunited with her beloved husband and they are still making some celestial music, which in turn, make me smile even more.
I have always rushed in life. I matured too soon, married too young, graduated a year ahead of my class in college, had my girls in my early twenties. I always had this feeling that I would run out of time for all the things I wanted to do, all the paintings I wanted to make, all the books I wanted to write, all the places I wanted to visit. Every second wasted was a second lost. Fortunately, the best gift that maturity has offered me is patience. And even then, that feeling that the sand is unavoidably falling inside the hourglass does not ever completely dissipate.
When we are faced with our own mortality and the irremediable hits from a challenging year, life does not become about how much time is left, but about the quality of the life we want. Time, as of today, keeps being quite a phantom measure of how much we have, how much we have left, and how much we have lived. So, is it useful to live our lives based on the time we have left?
Mrs. Elizabeth’s grin came to my mind. How do we learn to live so fully and present and in accordance to our souls’ calls so that time becomes irrelevant? How do we exist so coherently with our heart’s desires that one day we face death or ends or changes and decide “I am anxious to die soon, to move, to change, to leave,” because it has all been so worthy, because we have done everything we ever wanted, because our souls are satisfied? There is no way to predict how we would feel as we are expelling our last breaths, but we can control how we live our present moment. How can we increase our chances to feel that irrefutable joy? I am not sure I have all the answers, but I got at least one that I am willing to try: by letting my soul guide me to the places it wants to go. I can’t read the future, but I can safely assume that my bucket and to-do lists will not be completely crossed by the time I have to leave this earth. Every time I accomplish something or cross an item from those lists something new will make its way towards the index - lucky for me. But if I ever have hopes to one day being a Mrs. Elizabeth who grins with joy and a fulfilled soul, I have to start accumulating joy now. It is like a bank account: you get what you put in, sometimes you are lucky to even get interests. We need small and steady sources of joy. It is not about the big accomplishments, the things crossed out on our lists. Nobody sees death to the face and says “yeah, I am ready, I got my degree or I made so much money.” It is about the glee of living in coherence with our soul throughout and until an end we usually don’t see fore coming. So, in honor of all the Mrs. Elizabeths out there, with bright smiles that illuminate a room and fill a girls’s eyes with tears and hearts with love, I have rearranged my to-do list. There is a rolling item that will always get priority:
Chase joy.
How do I that? I guess my soul has the answer, an answer that will most likely change at times, and sometimes will be harder to hear in challenging periods. But I am willing to keep searching until my last breath, until the sand accumulates in the bottom of my hourglass. I am not sure what my last words on earth would be, but I know what my next words are:
My soul is very anxious to live and to live joyfully.
And as I write this, a huge grin draws in my face and illuminates the room and I feel my chest expanding while celestial music sounds in the background, because by saying it aloud it feels like I am depositing a big check into my Joy account. And well, who doesn’t dream with being richer?
