These are the hands of my senior friend Marion. Marion and her husband Don live in my community and are home bound due to health issues.
Don has macular degeneration, which has left him legally blind. He can hardly see, his hearing is impaired and his voice is scratchy, but Don loves to sing and is always humming a tune. He told me he always has a song in heart. Marion is sedentary as she is morbidly obese. She loves getting e-mail and will spend hours on the computer printing out the e-mail forwards most of us delete. She sends them, along with a greeting card, via snail mail to her friends and relatives who don't have a computer.
About a year and a half ago, I signed up to volunteer through an organization that assists seniors. I was matched up with Marion and we became fast friends.
Marion is 80 years old and suffers from serious health issues due to complications of being morbidly obese. She cannot walk more than 20 feet at a time and can do very little for herself. Don is her primary caretaker.
I visit Marion once a week for a couple of hours. We don't do anything special, but just sit and gab. She always wants to know about my kids, husband and family. Because she is limited in mobility, I can't take her out of the house.
Yesterday for our weekly visit, I brought along my “nail stuff” and gave her a manicure. You would have thought she died and went to heaven. Can you believe she has never, in her 80 years of life, worn nail polish? I cannot tell you, how over the moon she was, with pink polish on her fingernails. She crossed her hands over her heart and said it was how she wanted to be buried when she died.
I leave Marion each week and think what a blessing she is to me. I have grown to cherish our time together and know one of these weeks, I am going to get a call, to tell me our weekly visits have come to an end.
I tell you this, not to boast, but to say every single one of us has been blessed with gifts and talents we are called to share with those who are in need. And I'll let you in on a little secret, I have always been “afraid” of the older generations. Even as a child, I had a fear of seniors. I don't know why, but it was the reason I volunteered with this particular organization. I am sure there are those who have a gift with seniors but it wasn't necessarily mine, but I knew this would help me grow spiritually and boy has it ever!
