Please be seated

Emptiness
Montreal, QC, October 2009

About this photo: We're working our way through this week's "at rest" theme, and I'm hoping you're in a sharing mood. Please see here for details on how you can get involved. (And I promise to stop with the sad-themed entries soon. I can only mope online for so long.)

Barely three weeks after my father's funeral, we were back in Montreal, headed back into the hospital whose shadows had been cast across our family for generations. My mother-in-law, who had been hospitalized since just before the bottom fell out of our world, was still there. The brilliantly sunny afternoon defied our decidedly dark mood as we made our way into the foyer and through the drab hallways toward the elevator.

After a visit that made everyone feel a little bit better about the bad hand of cards we had been dealt, we gathered the little folks and slowly headed back to the real world. As we walked out of the hospital's west-side foyer - an otherwise forgettable vestibule where patients with nowhere to go watch an endless stream of cars picking up and dropping off - the still-bright sun beckoned me to stop and remember the moment.

Sure, the wheelchairs were sad reminders of what awaits some of us. But at the same time, they were empty. Which meant whoever needed them may have found the inner strength to walk on their own.

I guess we make positivity any way we can.

Your turn: Hospital waiting rooms. Please discuss.