Remembering Marie

No pictures today.  I just want to remember a special person.  I only met Marie a few years ago.  Her life had been reduced to a few possessions and a shared room in an adult care home.  I was there because I had been assigned.  I will admit that my first response at receiving my assignment was reluctance.  It seems that I have often had an elderly sister on my visiting teaching route.  Often it has been an elderly sister to whom I become a attached and then they pass away.  I find my self missing them.  I miss Rachel, Roma, Elise, and now Marie 

Her few possesions represented love.  The flowers, the pictures, the cards - she loved to see them.  It meant someone loved her and she loved them. She would often write down the names of people who came to see her.  She wanted to remember their kindness to her.    She would tell me with a joyful heart about her visitors.  When she couldn't remember who it was she could look it up and then we had mutual friends.

She knew how to be so positive.   I met her shortly after her husband passed away and she often talked about how wonderful it was that she had been able to see him again.  They had been separated by the needs of aging bodies. His kids brought him and her kids brought her to a meeting place, some town in the mountains, and she was so happy to have seen him again.  She remembered the good times and didn't dwell on the separation.


She did sometimes feel useless and frustrated in her situation.  Her mind was still sharp but her hands were crippled by arthritis so she was in this care home.  But she was not useless.  One of her roommates was a little disoriented to be in a care facilty and would wander around.  Marie gave her a small shawl that had been given to her.  She wanted her to feel loved and more comfortable. She watched for ways to make life easier for others in the facilty.  I occasionally found myself there at lunch time and she was always helping someone open their napkin or peel a lid off of something or ask for something they needed.  She soothed the spirits of a rather agitated resident more than once. 

I took her to the dentist a couple of times and she acted like it was a miracle that someone could do that.  We went for a drive one autumn to get her out.  She remembered that day with gratitude, not just once, but many times.  She was good at being grateful for the smallest thing.  I was very touched at Christmas time.  I had been at home putting up the Christmas tree for our household with it's trimmings filled with memories and then stopped to see her.  She was delighted that the home was putting up a tree with a few ornaments.  None of those ornaments were memory filled for her, but she could rejoice in the season without regretting the past.

She gave when she had so little to give.  She gave appreciation, kindness, encouragement, love and chocolates.  She had her children keep her supplied with chocolates so that she had something to offer in thanks to the caregivers that helped her in and out of bed and pushed her wheelchair and checked her pulse.  I would visit and she would offer a chocolate.  I would decline and say, "I'm really fine and don't need anything"  She would reply, "well, I want one.  So you have to have one with me."  We would eat a chocolate together and tell stories.  She could always tell when I was worried about something.  She gave me a listening heart.

She would tell me stories about her family.  Stories about rattlesnakes and moving across the country and lush plants by the doorstep that turned out to be illegal.  

Marie was excited to give something she had painted in the ceramics room to her daughter-in-law.  She knew that it was not to the standard she would have had for herself when she was younger and painting lovely watercolors.  She accepted that her hands couldn't do what they had once done.  But she was excited to give something that represented not her hands, but her heart.

She didn't have a home of her own anymore, but she welcomed me into her  beautiful heart furnished with a focus on the positive, loving kindness, thoughtfulness and gratitude.  It was a privilege to know Marie.