Late morning I go to visit a congregant who's recuperating in a nursing home / rehab facility. I call ahead to make sure it's a good time, and the staff tell me that it is. When I arrive, my congregant is sitting in a kind of parlor, where some fifteen or so elderly folks are singing hymns along with a cassette tape.

Slowly I realize that there is no standing furniture in the parlor. Even the flowered recliners which appear at first glance to be easy chairs are wheelchairs. Their inhabitants are sound asleep, mouths open. Some of them mumble words I can't make out. My congregant sleeps, too, even though several people are singing with gusto. "Amazing Grace." "When the Saints Come Marching In."

I murmur quiet prayers. The Mi Sheberach prayer which asks God to bring complete healing, a renewal of body and a renewal of spirit. A prayer I learned years ago from my teacher Rabbi Shaya Isenberg: may this person be blessed with simcha, joy; may he be blessed with shalom, peace; may he be blessed with refuah, healing; may he be blessed with whatever is best.

As a nurse collects the xeroxed hymn handouts, a parade of children with Halloween masks marches into the room. They make a quick circuit, waving to everyone and saying happy halloween. Most of the residents beam at them. One little boy, lagging behind the rest, enters the room and then takes the circuit almost at a run. "He wants to get away from all these ladies," chortles one white-haired woman, amused.

Behind me there's a man muttering that everyone can kiss his ass. The staff chide him: that's not a nice way to talk! Don't say that to people! but he doesn't seem to want to stop, so they wheel him to a different part of the room. Someone turns up the television, which is playing an old Western. The closed-captioning scrolls across the screen shortly before each line is delivered, giving me a peculiar sense of déja vu.

I don't want to wake my congregant. Maybe it's because I'm the parent of a three-year-old, but I can't bear to wake someone who is peacefully sleeping. He is breathing easy and his face is unworried in repose. I murmur to him that I am there and that I am holding him in prayer. I whisper a few more prayers for healing, for joy, for peace, for whatever is best. I pray for my congregant, and for the others who are sleeping, and for the man who's still grumbling that he can say "kiss my ass" if he wants to.

When I leave the nursing home, I feel curiously less anxious than I did when I went in. The aftermath of the storm has not changed. The coming election, and the nasty rhetoric around it, have not changed. But I feel I'm on more solid ground. We live, and if we are lucky, we grow old. We care for each other. We love one another. What else is there, in the end?