MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Every week, a guest draws a card from NPR's wild card deck and answers a big question about their life. Author Jason Reynolds says his mom taught him how to think about the world. She was deeply spiritual, a little hippy-dippy, in his words. He reflected with Wild Card host Rachel Martin on the experience of caring for his mom as she ages.
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RACHEL MARTIN: Is there anything in your life that feels like praying?
JASON REYNOLDS: You know, my mother is 79, almost 80, and she's dealing with some health challenges. And these health challenges over the course of the last year has put me in position to be a caretaker. And part of that caretaking means that my mother - I have to take care of very intimate things as it pertains to my mother. I have to wash her and I have to clean her. I have to, you know, pull her panties up. And it feels, in the midst of its burden - 'cause it is that, if we're being honest. It is burdensome sometimes.
MARTIN: Yep.
REYNOLDS: It also feels like prayer. It feels like I'm praying at the only creator that I've ever actually physically known...
MARTIN: Your mom.
REYNOLDS: ...My mother. I'm bowing at the feet, I'm washing the feet of the only God I've ever physically touched. And does it feel like praying? It feels like praying and everything else. This is the hallelujah of all hallelujahs. And I really, really mean that. It doesn't mean it's not difficult. It's painfully difficult. But I'd be lying to you if I didn't tell you that difficulty is only a piece of this experience. It's me acknowledging a vessel that has given me everything that I've become. And as that vessel continues to sort of - to empty, right? It's seeping out. And to be there and to maintain this vessel, to maintain her comfort, to keep - to maintain her dignity by making sure that she's clean and cared for - come on. I mean, what else could prayer be?
I - prayer can't just be asking, right? Sometimes I'm - it's me saying, I'm so grateful for everything you've given me that me taking these 45 minutes to bathe you is a very small drop in the bucket of the gratitude that I actually owe you. And I will do everything I can to refill, to pour into this until I can't pour or you don't have a bucket anymore for me to pour into. What a gift. What a gift. Honestly, and I - you know...
MARTIN: Yeah.
REYNOLDS: ...It hurts to say, and I can feel my tears welling up in my eyes, but seriously, I wish my mom wasn't going through what she was going through, but I'm so grateful to be there so that she don't have to go through it by herself. She can go through it with what she made. You made the thing that is meant to come here and make sure that...
MARTIN: Yeah.
REYNOLDS: ...You're all right in the midst of this process. I'm going to help you slide on up out of here. I'm going to help you transition. I'm going to make sure that there's comfort for you. The least I could do after teaching me how to be bold, how to be caring, how to be sensitive, how to cry, how to be a person whole and unfettered by the pressures of this life. Come on. The least I could do - that is prayer, for sure.
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KELLY: And you can watch that full conversation with Jason Reynolds by following Wild Card with Rachel Martin on YouTube.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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