I was at Our Lady of the Lake hospital in Baton Rouge all day today. My dad had surgery. He came through fine, thanks be to God. Most of his nurses throughout the day were black ladies, and you never heard so much “baby” this and “honey” that passing between those women and my country mother and father. The genuine sweetness among them all, and the unforced tenderness of the way my folks and the nurses talked to each other, was deeply Southern. It’s just how people are here. I noticed at day’s end, after we were settled into Daddy’s hospital room, that one of the nurses had written what you see above on the patient care whiteboard on the wall.

This is a Catholic hospital, so it’s okay to be religiously demonstrative, but the black nurses, likely all Baptist or Pentecostal, kick it up a notch or two … and I love them for it. “You all have a blessed day,” she said as she left. We did, and that nurse and her colleagues were a big part of the blessing. Back in 1991 or 1992, when my aunt was in this same hospital dying of cancer, the pain in the last hour of her life was so great that not even morphine helped. She was howling in agony. In the eye of the storm, a black nurse ran into the room, held her hand, and asked her if she wanted Jesus to receive her. My aunt said yes, yes she did. The nurse prayed with her, and my aunt became calm, even serene. A few minutes later, she died. I can’t prove a thing, but my sense is that my aunt may well be with God in eternity today because of that nurse’s audacious compassion.

Here in Louisiana, we may be poor, we may be backwards, we may be a mess in a hundred thousand ways, but we have lots of women like these nurses here, and it is a grace and a privilege to live among them.

A friend of mine in St. Francisville, Jeanne Morris, is taking care of that lost baby possum. Look at it. Look at it! BABY POSSUM!

Yes, I know, I posted the other day that image from our Walker Percy Weekend event at Afton Villa Gardens. It’s been a long, hard day at the hospital, though, and I needed to see it again. Maybe you did too. But not as much as you needed to see the BABY FREAKING POSSUM!