Wednesday, October 13, 2010

His Holiness

Today Amaey and got to and meet Dalai Lama at the Ronald McDonald House.

Amaey is on a 4 week chemo cycle and is hit quite hard because of it. This was his third week and his counts were low and he is neutropenic so they could not give him all the chemo he needed to get.
He had to stay home from school and I cancelled all his extra curricular activities for the week.
However getting the blessings of Dalai Lama does not happen everyday so we really wanted Amaey to attend this event.
His Holiness is in town for a conference on Compassion through Stanford and the Compassion Project. One of the donors arranged for him to stop by at the house and one of the LPCH social workers asked us if we would like to go and I jumped on it.

It was a mixed experience, on one side Amaey was neutropenic and I had him in a room full of people. We were supposed to see him at 2pm but he did not show up until 3:45. I could see Amaey fading and I was feeling really guilty. However when he walked in, he quietly went to the kids, held their hand, kissed their foreheads, hugged them and then he stood quietly for a few minutes just looking at everyone. I felt so emotional that I started crying. There was something in the room, there was this warmth on his face, there was this purity in his look. It was beautiful.

When he finally started talking he said, I know what you all are going through is really sad. He said that there are only two things that can happen, either your child can get better or not, the most common feeling during such a time is worry and sadness. However he sad, if we spend all the time worrying and being sad we are losing focus of the one thing we should be doing, giving love and affection to the child.
Sometimes sadness can takeover life and then we have space for nothing else. He talked about how fortunate we were in this country to have all the facilities and care compared to many other nations where children would have died from sicknesses that he felt around the room.
There was a 3 year old boy who was getting a kidney transplant tomorrow and his holiness blessed him with a warm hug.

After he was done talking he placed a white silk scarf around each child's neck. I felt sad that I did not get a one-on-one experience with him but then I realized that I had already felt touched by his presence, I really did not need a physical confirmation. I was there in that small room very close to his Holiness and I felt his intense presence.

When I asked Amaey about his experience, he was so untouched by the whole thing. He said he was bored and really wanted to get out of there and that his holiness used the word sad too many times. I was amazed at his words and his honesty... I'm sure some day he will make his own connection and feel his own tug. When that happens I'm sure he will feel elated and fortunate.