“Everybody is going to be dead one day, just give them time.”
Two seriously ill people were lying in the same ward. One of them sat up in bed every afternoon for an hour to exercise his body. His bed was closer to the only window in the ward. The other sick man just lay in his bed all day, staring at the ceiling. They talked about family, wife, children, their military service, their holidays, as is usual in such situations. The man who lay at the window spent each afternoon, when he sat up, beginning to convey to the other what he saw of the outside world through the window.
The man lying on the other bed was after a while kept alive almost exclusively by these colorful reports, he looked forward to them, that was all the variety in his life. The window overlooked a pleasant park with a pond. Wild ducks and swans swam in the pond, and children played on it with their remote-controlled toy boats. Couples in love sat by the colorful flowerbeds for hours, lost in each other.
While the patient by the window described the world outside in exhaustive detail, the other, who was always lying down, closed his eyes and imagined the scene.
On a warm afternoon, the man at the window talked about a carnival procession through the park. Although the man who lay still could not hear the musicians, he could imagine them from the other's vivid description.
Days and weeks passed. One morning, a nurse preparing to bathe the sick found the man by the window lifeless in his bed, having fallen asleep quietly for ever in the night. Distraught, she called the staff to take the deceased out.
As soon as the opportunity presented itself, the patient, who had previously been lying in the inner bed, asked to be allowed to lie in the other bed. The nurse was happy to help, making him comfortable on that bed and then leaving him alone. Slowly, in pain, the man turned to the window and was shocked to see that it faced a firewall.
He asked the nurse what had happened to the departed roommate to make the world beyond the window look so beautiful. The nurse told her that the man was blind, he couldn't even see the wall. She was probably just trying to encourage you," she told him.
/Author unknown/
