Do You Care?

A Story on Love, Patience, and a Life-Changing Encounter

Early in 2025, on a sparkly clear and cool spring afternoon, I visited a local chiropractor on recommendation from my wife. I’d twisted the muscles under my right collar bone and for two weeks it was super tense and tight and really driving me crazy. Yes, yes, fine, I’ll go try the chiropractor. So there I was.

The office was in one of those hodgepodge strip malls, jammed between other unrelated businesses: a nail and hair salon, a kitchen renovation shop, and a Chinese food restaurant that was strangely empty for the middle of the day (maybe they do mostly takeout?). The chiropractor had clearly moved offices recently, as she told me to look for the shop marked, “Music Lessons.”

I entered the glass door into a sparse but quaint waiting area in the front of the shop. It was filled with a few older but not too dilapidated cloth seats, a small end table holding a purple and white orchid, and posters of lush, serene landscapes, as well as a white man in his mid-60s sitting quietly, staring into nothing. The chiropractor’s voice called out for me to fill out the paperwork while she finished with a client.

I sat and tried to fill in too many details on too small lines in too unreadable handwriting (seriously people, it’s the 21st century, just put it online), when a white woman, also in her mid-60s, was led out by the chiropractor and met by the man sitting with me.

The man and the woman were not small or big, wore modest clothing of soft browns and greens of no particular brand, and had greying hair and some but not many wrinkles. They were just regular people entering a later chapter of their lives.

He stood and held up a jacket for the woman and changed my life forever.

I sat not five feet from the couple as I watched the man spend the next ten minutes helping the woman put on her jacket with the care and attention that a parent has with a young child.

“Hold out your arm,” he said with a gentle smile, himself holding out the left arm of the jacket. She looked at him blankly and held out her right arm. There was no humor in this gesture, only care and patience. “Nope, hold out the other one.” She glanced briefly down at her other arm and held out that one as well. He took the opportunity to put the left jacket arm on, carefully pulling it up and over her shoulder, then around her back.

Slowly. Gently.

Then he swung around to her right side, and the woman swiveled her head dramatically, following him but unsure of what he was doing. Now he was on her right side, behind her slightly, holding out the right coat arm.

“I’m over here,” he said and held the arm up, smiled at her, met her wide eyes with a reassuring gaze that only comes from decades of care. He smiled lightly, patiently. He had all the time in the world. “Here you go.”

She finally figured out where his voice came from and pivoted to find him at her right, but in doing so the jacket pulled off her shoulders, and so he took a step back and had to pull it back over her shoulders and then come back up to her right side again.

Slowly.

All the time.

“Hold up your arm,” he said and held out the right jacket arm. She put out her left arm, already covered by the jacket.

He smiled again and touched her right arm gently, “this one.” She looked down at her where he just touched her, then looked up at him. He touched it again and held up the jacket arm. “Hold out your arm.” She looked down at the jacket arm, then at her arm, which she then held out straight in front of her.

He held up the jacket arm, wrapped around her body and so now the arm was two feet from the jacket arm. You know the gesture. She needed to pivot slightly and pull her arm back toward the jacket arm behind her.

“Over here, there you go.” She gave him the wide-eyed look again and then there was a connection and she moved her arm back and in an instant, he captured it like a fisherman catching a fish in a net. Grabbed, bagged, and tagged. Before she could do anything else, he had the jacket up her right arm and around her shoulders and was patting her back.

“There, all good. Come on, let’s go.” He turned her toward the door, held it open as she followed him out.

---

The doctor came out and wished them well, then turned and headed back into her office, letting me know it was my turn.

They left into their day and I was left near tears.

I stood for a beat, processing what I had seen. Sometimes it takes me a minute to analyze what is happening. From that day, that moment seemed like a lifetime.

I turned to go to my appointment, and I left the interaction behind to get on with my own visit, but something in that moment changed me.

The moment is still there, now, so I can tell you.

---

The last ten years have given me many opportunities to face my mortality, my purpose, my time left here. I have visited close friends and family that suffer from Alzheimer's, seen the blank open depths of missing reality. I have spoken at my father’s funeral, realized the immeasurable pressure of everyone needing everything from me. I have visited others in hospitals and had others visit me while I was there myself.

I’ve sat in the quiet, dull solitude of the hospital room, multiple times, I’ve stared at the dead and dying and felt my own death hover at the edges of my sight, and I’ve had the hard truth crash down around me, finally seeing with crystal clarity the total truth that

there is only love.

That’s it. Nothing else.

What that couple demonstrated in the few minutes I watched them – the sadness and care and patience of our fragile existence – it was a download of our human experience in ten minutes. I can’t stop thinking about it.

I don’t have a choice on growing old. No one does. And I don’t know if I’ll make it to the end with my body and brain intact. There’s a thread of Alzheimer's running in my DNA that has me hesitate every time I forget a band’s name or a shopping list item or a technical term for a Jira configuration. Getting old scares me, quite a bit.

But it scares everyone, right? Or most people? It’s not just dementia but all the other detritus of our slowly failing capitalist world that crashes down around us and taxes our souls: this is the human condition now. Maybe for all eternity. Over and over we hear that people on their deathbeds regret not the hours they didn’t work, the financial portfolios they didn’t build, or the luxury cars they didn’t drive.

Over and over people at the end of their lives regret time they didn’t spend with the people they love, didn’t slow down to enjoy the moment while they could, that they didn’t take the time to show how much they care.

So all we can do is live our lives to our best abilities and take the moment out of the day to care and be cared for.

To care is to love. And to love is to be loved.

What else is there?