Waiting

Photo found here

Today, in a short trip to the local Walmart, I saw an unusual number of people waiting.

Parking my car, I saw a police car pull up behind a car two spots up, lights flashing. The driver's door was open, and he was just sitting in his seat with a Walmart employee and the police officer nearby. He was a portly man, his face ashen, head back against the headrest, wearing an expression of looking inward. He seemed to be waiting. I couldn't hear the employee's words, but it was clearly a question about how the man was doing. And then the police officer was asking the employee something.

As I turned away to give the trio some privacy from attention, a family was getting out of their car to go into the store--a family made up of a man, a very pregnant woman, and a boy of about six. I became aware of them when I heard the woman's voice, sharp-edged, say to the man as she leaned against the car, "I'm having a very strong contraction!" The expression on the man's face said to me that he wasn't absorbing the message yet. I guessed she would not be waiting much longer for the arrival of a new little person, and another change forever in their lives. Waiting.  Nearly done.

At the door I saw the Salvation Army worker waiting for people to put money in his red bucket. He was happy and friendly. It must be nice to wait for something that you know will bless needy people. Waiting. For good.

When I came out of the store, the Walmart employee still stood by the little car, the driver still sat with his head back, and the police officer was gone. I almost thought I could hear the driver's thoughts, although it could have been my own dramatic musings:  "Is this it? Will it get worse? Is it the beginning of the end?" Is it just me who thinks thoughts like that in the midst of pain, in the waiting? Waiting? For the eventual inevitable?

The employee was standing very straight, stretched up almost on his tippy-toes, looking across the cars in the lot toward one entrance, then the other, waiting. There was no sign of anyone approaching, no sound of an ambulance siren. Yet it was clear: both men were waiting, waiting, waiting.

I think we all are.