{"id":39,"date":"2005-02-28T10:41:20","date_gmt":"2005-02-28T14:41:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2005\/02\/28\/reading-too-much-into-things\/"},"modified":"2005-02-28T10:41:20","modified_gmt":"2005-02-28T14:41:20","slug":"reading-too-much-into-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2005\/02\/28\/reading-too-much-into-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Too Much Into Things"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a1703'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><P>I went to the hospital yesterday to visit my friend, Regina. I rode the elevator up to the 8th floor and walked towards her room. When I got to the door, I noticed that it was open &#8211; but the lights were out. Then I saw two men with their heads bowed. The man facing me was Regina&#8217;s brother, Larry. The other man (whose back was to me) was apparently a priest\/minister\/reverend\/rabbi\/religious person conducting a prayer.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>From the doorway, I couldn&#8217;t hear what was going on &#8211; but the setting was quite somber so I passed the room and decided to look out the window for a spell. A few minutes later I returned to Regina&#8217;s room only to hear the holy man reciting more prayers. At this point, I began getting nervous. For one thing &#8211; Regina has never been a particularly religious person. And in the 9 months that she has been fighting breast cancer and I&#8217;d been visiting her at hospitals, home and rehab centers, not once did I witness a holy man in her presence, prayers taking place, or the lights turned off during the day.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>Anyway, for the next 15-20 minutes or so, I would pace from her doorway to the end of the hall where I could look out over the Charles River and Boston skyline. Normally, such views distract me (the urbanist in me)&#8230;but yesterday I could only focus on the negative things running through my head: that the holy man was either telling her to &#8220;let go&#8221; or that she had already passed away and they were praying. Needless to say, my palms were sweaty and my heart was racing.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>Finally, as I was stanging by her doorway once again, I heard Larry and the holy man say &#8220;Amen&#8221;. The priestly fellow got up, put on his coat, shook Larry&#8217;s hand and left the room. Larry saw me at the door and waved me in. Nervously, I entered the room and saw Regina turn her head towards me (YAY!).<\/P><br \/>\n<P>As I sat next her she softly said: &#8220;Oh my God, he was so long-winded. He came to pray for me and it took over a half hour.&#8221; Then she, Larry and I laughed. It was such a relief.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>&nbsp;<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I went to the hospital yesterday to visit my friend, Regina. I rode the elevator up to the 8th floor and walked towards her room. When I got to the door, I noticed that it was open &#8211; but the lights were out. Then I saw two men with their heads bowed. The man facing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}