"This stranger was in a great deal of pain, and I could see the pain was greater than he was."

Larissa Kaye Batten (llbeara@aol.com) writes "Soul Food," a weekly column for SpiritSite.com.  

Larissa is a prolific writer whose work has been featured in several publications.  

You can visit Lara's web site at www.miracleanimalrescue.com (site will open in a new window).

I am the last person in the world who would ever hug a stranger. For years, I would barely hug my friends.

"You hug sorta weird," my friends would say. "You somehow manage to keep most of your body away from us when you hug."

That, of course, was on a good day.

"I’m sorry, I don’t want to hug you," I told friends for a long time.

I was more than happy to hug my favorite teddy bear, but I managed to avoid hugging human beings for a good while.

Once in a while I would hug my friend Patty, but that was about it.

I was sexually abused as a child, and hugs were high risk for me. Too much touching. Too much love. Too much body contact. Forget about it. I would rather hug my teddy bear.

Times have changed, thanks to years of recovery. However, I still am wary of many a hug. I am happy to hug my close friends most of the time, but I am still picky about everyone else. And my close friends know that I won’t hug for any length of time, as I still need somewhat of a quick getaway.

Nothing surprised me more than my experience at the Savannah Airport in Georgia a few weeks ago.

I drove there on a Thursday night to pick up my husband, who was returning from yet another trip. I took two of my dogs with me for company and safety, and I had to leave them in the car when I went into the airport.

The flight was delayed, which I would have learned earlier if I had thought to call ahead. Fortunately, I did not have more than a half hour extra to wait.

I did not have a book or magazine with me, so I had to keep myself occupied some other way. I walked around a bit, looking for an old newspaper someone might have left behind. No luck. I wandered some more.

I watched the other people waiting, studying their faces, their clothes, their relationships with their relatives and friends who were also waiting.

I do not remember noticing one older man at all until I thought my husband’s plane had landed. I wanted to go up to the big window to watch the plane hook up to the indoor rampway, and I noticed that one man was already standing by the window.

He said something to me, and I do not recall what he said. I wasn’t interested in him, and I had not planned that night for trivial talk with a stranger. Still, I think it is important to at least be polite.

"It’s always nice to know when the plane has landed safely," I said to the man.

"Yes," he said. "I guess they’ve landed."

In fact, they hadn’t landed yet. We had watched a plane land and assumed it carried the people we were at the airport to pick up. No such luck.

"I’m waiting for my daughter," the man told me. "She’s coming from California."

"That’s a long trip," I said. "Did she come direct?"

"I’m not even sure," he said. "I just know she was delayed."

"Well, she must have had a long day then," I said.

"Not too bad," the man said.

"I guess the plane hasn’t landed after all," I told the man.

"Well it should be landing anytime now," he said. "It’s already late."

"Yeah," I said.

I had said enough. I didn’t mind being polite to the stranger, but I had other things to do while I waited in the somewhat empty airport for my husband.

I didn’t have a book or a magazine to read. I hadn’t found an old newspaper. There was no television. There was no radio. I didn’t have any friends with me. The dogs were in the car. My husband was late. But I didn’t need to keep talking to a stranger.

I turned away from the window and walked back to a row of attached seats. Voila! There was a crumpled, well read USA Today. It’s not my favorite paper, but I knew it would do.

I sat down happily, picked up any old section of the paper, and for the life of me had no desire to read it. My eyes flitted about the page, but I didn’t focus.

The man I had finished speaking to came right over to the seat next to me and sat down. He could have sat anywhere. There were a zillion empty seats nearby, but he chose the one next to me.

"Here," I said, handing him a section of the paper. That would keep him busy. We had obviously had enough conversation between us. Maybe the newspaper would occupy him.

"No thanks," he answered. "I’ve already read it."

It was probably his paper.

I tried reading again, and found I still could not concentrate.

The stranger began to speak to me again, and I decided to engage in conversation for lack of anything else to do.

I have absolutely no idea how we got onto the subject of dogs, but we did. Anyone who knows me knows I love to talk about dogs.

I told him a bit about my dogs.

"Do you have any dogs?" I asked the stranger.

"One," he replied. "I have one dog. A little one."

"That’s nice," I said.

"My dog travels with me," the man said. "When I go to visit my daughter, I take the dog."

"That’s a really long trip. You drive all the way to California?" I asked, astonished. This man was no spring chicken, as they say. He must have been in his early 70s.

"How long does the trip take?" I asked, but frankly I was more interested in the dog. "Do you stay in hotels where they take animals?" I asked.

"I keep the dog in the car," he said. "She does fine there. And the trip definitely takes a few days. I’m not sure what I will do next time, but we have always traveled with the dog."

"I think it’s great you travel with your dog," I said. "I have five of them right now. Two are foster dogs. We’re looking for people to adopt them."

I always like to mention our foster dogs in case people might be interested in adopting.

"My husband and I do rescue work, and we try to prevent dogs from being euthanized when the shelters are full. One of the dogs we have right now was supposed to be euthanized, but we took her from the shelter before she was. Any interest in adopting a dog?"

"Oh, one is enough," he answered.

Oh well. I always like to try.

"I still can’t believe you travel across the entire country with your dog. How does your dog do on the trip?"

"Well, the last time we went – "

I did not actually hear the rest of his words, and I am not even sure there were any.

The stranger’s eyes had misted over, and he had trouble finishing his thought.

This was a stranger, and I did not know the man’s story. I didn’t know what to say, so I just did my best.

"It seems like you’ve had a loss," I said gently.

He looked over at me. "My wife," he said sadly.

"I’m sorry," I said. "How long ago did she die?"

I figured he would say a year, maybe two. I have always imagined it would take years to grieve the loss of a spouse. Now that I am married, I imagine it would take forever.

So I assumed this man had had plenty of time already to do his grieving. His eyes would clear up, the tears would be gone, and the plane would arrive. I was very wrong.

"She died Tuesday," he said.

Oh my God. It was Thursday.

"I am sorry," I said, "I am so, so sorry. You must be in total shock."

"I don’t even know," he said quietly.

This stranger could have been telling a story. He could have been trying to make me feel sorry for him. He could have been trying to make a new friend.

But I knew he wasn’t. This stranger was in a great deal of pain, and I could see the pain was greater than he was. As he had told me about his wife, the pain slipped out with the words and hung around us. I grabbed on to some of the pain and took it within. I really felt for the stranger.

Meanwhile, the stranger wasn’t a stranger at all. The stranger was my friend. This stranger was my brother. This stranger was my fellow man.

"I am so sorry," I said. "That is why you’re daughter is coming to visit," I said.

"My wife and I were married for 47 years," he said.

The man was mourning. He and his dog would never drive to California again with his wife.

I knew why he needed to talk to me. He needed for someone to fill in until his daughter arrived.

I hadn’t even wanted to come to the airport that night. Sure, I wanted to see my husband. But I prefer not to drive late at night, and my husband had bought his plane tickets without even telling me. I resented him for that. I had resented him recently for a lot of things.

My husband and I have been married for two and a half years, and I have found plenty of reasons to complain in that time. Negativity has slipped in every time I have forgotten how close it stands in wait.

I have complained about such little things – how often my husband wants to change the sheets because of our dogs, how often he travels, how he eats cereal with "too much sugar."

This stranger, this friend sitting next to me in the airport, he had been married for 47 years. Now his wife was gone. And he had turned to me as a friend to listen. Here I was, waiting for my husband to get off his plane – alive and well. This stranger, meanwhile, had lost his best friend.

God had taught me yet another lesson in humility. I had nothing to complain about in my marriage at all. My husband was alive. My husband was on his way home. My husband would arrive in minutes, safe and sound.

This man next to me had tears in his eyes. The pain sliced through him over and over. He was alone now, alone with his dog. He had not seen his daughter since his wife had died. His wife had died two days earlier!

"I don’t know if you believe in them, but I will keep you in my prayers," I said.

"Oh, I believe," he said.

"So you’re a man of faith?" I asked.

"God spoke to me once," he said. "I don’t know if you would believe this, but he spoke right to me."

"Oh, I believe you!" I said. "He has spoken to me, too."

Were we really strangers, this man and I? Or were we fellow journeymen? Fellow travelers on the spiritual path of life?

"I was supposed to have open heart surgery," the man explained. "And God spoke to me. He told me there was nothing wrong with my heart."

"I believe you," I said with a smile. "I really do."

"The doctors couldn’t believe it. It was true. They looked at me again a few years later. I never had the surgery. My heart was fine."

I was so engaged in this conversation that I barely noticed the passengers from my husband’s plane begin to arrive.

"Can I ask you something?" I said to the stranger, my friend. I did not even know his name.

"I don’t normally ask this of a stranger, but can I give you a hug?"

I was scared to ask this question, but I knew I needed to – not only for him, but for me. I needed the connection. I needed to say I was sorry for his loss in a much deeper way than words.

I thought I had scared him off.

"Yes, yes you may," the man said, and he stood for his hug.

I stood, too, and I hugged the man. I told him I would pray for him, and I gave him the one thing I have fought for so many years to keep to myself. A hug.

I gave the stranger a hug.

And he received the hug and gave it back.

He laughed, too. "That’s your husband?" he said as I said hello to my husband over the man’s shoulder. "I hope he doesn’t beat me up."

Indeed, my husband had arrived.

My husband, God bless him, did not question me. He just stood there and waited for his turn for a hug.

I introduced the man to my husband, although I did not know his name until then. The man told my husband about the time God spoke to him.

Then the man saw his daughter arrive. He went to her and another woman, and I saw them all hold and grasp at each other and their grief.

It was only then that I began to cry.

"Aren’t you going to say hello?" my husband asked.

I said hello, but still I choked back the tears.

"Wow," I said.

"I don’t know how you attract these people," my husband said as we left the airport, "but they seem to know to come to you."

Never in a million years would I think a stranger would come to me for a hug, but I knew I could not have left the man without one.

"I am blessed," I told my husband, but I knew he already knew that.

For the next few days and nights, I prayed for the man and his family. I remembered the way he, his daughter, and the third person clung to each other in their grief. Watching their circle of mourning that night, I was awed at how he had let a stranger in.

I would like to think that God put me in that man’s life to bless him and to pray for him.

But I know God better than that now. I believe God put the stranger and I into each other’s lives so we could bless and pray for each other, so we could share the light and breath of God, so I could pass on my hope and compassion to him, so I could see how blessed I am to be married to my husband.

And so this stranger, this friend, and I could wrap ourselves into the arms of one of the best prayer’s God has given us – the prayer of a hug.

Bless you, stranger. Bless you, my friend.

Thank you, God, for the prayer of a hug.

And for the prayer of a friend.

Amen.

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