It’s Great to Be Needed

With hired staff to assist the more unfortunate ones here, I had a chance to help someone recently and it felt very good about it. In the activity room a woman in a scooter was not thrilled to try to learn a new game called Apples to Apples. She commented that the woman who had taken charge of teaching her and another woman present, was laughing and talking at the same time and that confused her. She thought it a silly game. We had less than an hour to play, for the Bingo lovers would start their game on time. So, our game folded without the woman’s really learning how to play Apples to Apples.

The one “in charge” left the table and I put away the game, which took about four minutes. When I passed our table to leave the room, I saw the woman in the scooter drop several cards from her billfold to the floor, plus some wee change she was trying to fetch to spend on Bingo. I pulled out the chair I had earlier vacated and sat down and picked up all her cards and the change and handed them to her. Then she wanted some Bingo cards to play that game with. I got her a stack of those. She did not ask me to do any of these things for her, but merely expressed the need. I walked down the hall, feeling wonderful by helping her.

That night at dinner, this same lady wheeled herself to our table and asked if she could join us. It was during the meal I learned she was without a family—she was the very last of it. How sad to be the last.

And how interesting that two more occasions I could help with came the next day: someone asked me to read and comment on a poem written by a teenager whom the lady does not know. That was easy. The other paper contained the résumé of a former journalist, for me to evaluate in preparation for our writing seminar. It took a magnifying glass for that one. Her handwriting is as bad as mine.

It’s great to be needed. ♥