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We're All Neighbors
As with all character-building experiences, my memories of AmeriCorps are a mixture of
the positive and the frustrating.
One of my fondest recollections occurred one afternoon at the Veterans Administration Hospital Nursing Home in Charleston, S.C., where I had set up an Independent Service Project and was among seven corps members visiting patients. The veterans living in the nursing home weren't leaving any time soon. They couldn't take care of themselves, and most were in plain old bad shape.
Midway through the afternoon, I ran into two other corps members who told me about their frustrations with Ron, the patient at the end of the hall. They'd left his room after being unable to make out most of what he was saying. I went to visit Ron to see if my luck was any better.
He was delighted to have company, quickly telling me that he "loves to talk." He couldn't hear, though. I took a pen out of my pocket and took a paper towel from a nearby dispenser. Then I started writing.
Two hours later, Ron asked me if he could keep the paper towels—all ten or so of them, filled top to bottom on both sides. They had been my half of the conversation, a conversation with many facets. We talked about religion—he had never met a Jew before. We talked about traveling in Europe—his motivation for joining the Army in 1929. We talked about his hometown of Hendersonville, S.C.
He lived 84 years in a house that his father built in 1914, when Ron was 3. Ron, who couldn't walk, hadn't been home in several years. We discussed the pictures on the wall of his room—of his son who'd taken over the family chicken-farming business in Hendersonville, his grandson who is 9 years old, his wife who had died a decade earlier, and the Methodist church on his street back home, which seemed to be a focal point in his life. I sometimes had to ask Ron to repeat himself several times, and always had to listen carefully in order to make out what he said. I heard every word, though.
One time toward the end of our talk he got especially fired-up. We were discussing religious hatred, and Ron went off. "We're all neighbors! Why don't people see that? You're not just the neighbor of the person living next to you. He lives next to someone else, and him to someone else, and all the way until everyone is connected!"
It was 5 o'clock and time to leave the hospital, so I took the last paper towel from his hand. On it I wrote, "Neighbor—I have to go now. I'll come visit again soon."
I'm going back this Saturday. Hopefully, the paper towel dispenser is full. |
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