What are we waiting for?

I have been thinking a lot about waiting. Specifically, waiting rooms. When you sit in a waiting room, watching your fellow human beings wait alongside you, you not only learn about them but about yourself. The middle aged couple that sits side by side, never talking, never touching, just staring straight ahead. Are they waiting for her? Him? Someone already getting treated? The mother and son, so weary neither sits upright. They just slump over the chairs, eyes black with the tired that can only come from days, possibly weeks of, waiting. The young couple, with three children under the age of five, the father leaving the mother alone with the children so he can go get his radiation treatment. Both parents under the age of thirty. One woman, waits by herself. Another man, waits alone. One woman in a wheelchair after her treatment, tells her son on her cellphone how much she loves him and that she is so lucky to have him in her life. She is effusive, emotional and her gratitude is palpable throughout the room.

I sit, in between my worried and helpful parents, and I wonder about all those people. Are they waiting for answers? Waiting for a cure? Waiting for death? The title of Waiting Room could not be more apt, or more uncomfortable. It is the waiting, the in between, that can make an illness near unbearable. People get stuck in waiting rooms whether it is for health reasons, or life reasons. I wonder about myself. I wonder why I have been waiting so long?