Bonus Moms: Then, there was Helen

Dear, sweet Helen is a Bonus Mom whom I shared with my BFF, Laura.  I first met Helen in January of the year 2000.  I had signed up to serve in a para-church ministry in Charlotte called Love, INC (Love In the Name of Christ).  Love INC was created to minister to the poor and elderly in our community.  It was created to come along side social service agencies and help in ways they could not reach. Many different churches in the community enlist volunteers.  A sign-up sheet had been passed around my church.  I checked the box that said "drive someone to the grocery store or run errands."  I thought to myself, how hard can that be?

It was many years before I heard from Love INC again.  I had forgotten about it. Then one day a social worker called me and asked if I would be willing to take a lady named Helen Medlin to the grocery store.  She lived in low income (Salvation Army) Senior housing uptown Charlotte called Booth Gardens.  Booth Gardens is a very nice place for the money.  The units are small.  Helen had a tiny galley kitchen with a very small refridgerator.  She went to the grocery store just once per month. That made it hard to fit everything in the small fridge and freezer.  But somehow, she managed.

To be honest, I wasn't sure about this volunteer opportunity.  I had just returned from visiting my parents in Pennsylvania over Christmas.  I was sad because my father was showing ever increasing signs of dementia.  This trip home was the first time he did not know my name.  I remember having a heavy heart the day I called Helen for the first time.  She wasn't sure she really needed my help.  She had some relatives in the area who sometimes took her grocery shopping.  But they were not consistent.  We arranged for me to pick her up the following Saturday to go to the grocery store.

When I pulled up to the apartment complex, Helen was waiting for me on a bench outside.  She had her walker beside her and she had dark glasses on.  Helen had bad knees and even worse vision.  She wore dark glasses in the sunlight due to macular degeneration (a disease that affects the elderly which causes one to go blind).  She walked VERY slowly hunched over and pushing her walker with wheels.

I learned in the car that Helen was 79 years old and had lived at Booth Gardens approximately 8 years.  She married at 17 (her husband was supposed to have a date with her sister, who was not interested.)  Helen was smitten from the beginning and it lasted until his death 58 years later.  I would see later that she kept a picture of him beside her bed.

Helen and her husband adopted two daughters.  She said that she always wanted a son but never got one.  I wish I could remember the stories...they were unique. Almost like they were dropped onto her doorstep.  They were legal adoptions but she had somehow known the mothers.  It wasn't like she registered with an agency.

One of her daughters had already passed away when I met Helen.  She died at age 50 of Lung Cancer.  The other daughter lived in Charleston, SC.  Too far away to take Helen to the grocery store.  Helen missed her independance fiercely and wished that she could drive.  But her failing eyesight had robbed her of that privilege.

So that was how I found myself at a Bi-Lo on the "wrong side of town" with my new friend, Helen.  She would bring a list each time which was hard to read due to her failing eyesight.  We would walk ever so slowly down each aisle, Helen leaning on her walker as I loudly described the items in passing ..."Now we are at jellies and jams....do you need any jelly or peanut butter?  What kind do you want?"  

I learned a lot on these trips.  I learned that people actually do eat liver mush.  I learned that one could over-dress to go grocery shopping (that would be me, on trip #1).  I learned that the first of the month on a Saturday was the worst time to go to a grocery store "on the wrong side of town."  The store was extremely crowded and waiting in line to pay seemed to take forever.  Some people in front of us in line had as many as 4 different vouchers.  I learned that prices really do matter.  If the price was too high ($2.89 for broccoli), Helen would shake her head and we would walk away.  Once in the meat section, a man excused himself to reach in front of us to get some meat.  Then he put it back down and shook his head with a smile, "I guess I won't be buying meat today at that price..."  I learned that I was spoiled.  I couldn't recall putting something back at the grocery store because it was too expensive.

I picked up some handy tips, too.  Helen taught me to make muffins with craisins in them.  She told me to soak the craisins in water first so that they wouldn't dry out the muffins.  

When we would return to Helen's apartment complex, I would have to find the grocery cart.  It would be hiding in the laundry room or sometimes in the bushes.  I would load all of the groceries that were in my trunk into the grocery cart and wheel it to Helen's tiny apartment.  Then I would unload it onto Helen's counters and take the cart back to the laundry room before I would return to help Helen put away her things.  

From start to finish, these grocery trips took 3 to 4 hours.  I found it exhausting. So did Helen, with her bad knees and failing sight, it was not easy.  She was ever so grateful, though.  She always had a donation for Love, INC which she would give to me to pass on.  

It wasn't very long before she started to say, "I love you."  She would say it on the phone and she would say it more than once before I left her.  She really did love me.  I loved her, too.  She was easy to love.

I didn't always look forward to the grocery shopping.  I loathed it, over time, to be honest.  I loved Helen, though, and I began to learn that loving someone requires a sacrifice of self.  Loving Helen meant grocery shopping on the first Saturday of the month on "the wrong side of town."  But she was worth it.

In June of 2001, I had emergency surgery for Ovarian Cancer followed by 6 months of chemotherapy.  I asked my BFF, Laura, if she would be willing to take my friend, Helen, grocery shopping.  Helen was so easy to love that I knew Laura would love her, too.  I was right. 

Helen, Janice, Laura, and Tyler

Helen, Laura, and Tyler

Laura took her faithfully while I recovered from cancer.  Then, when I was well enough, Laura and I began to share the responsibility.  Helen became a Bonus Mom to both of us.  We took her to dinner on her birthday each year.  We bought her Christmas presents.  After my mother died in 2004, I began to buy Helen the clothes that I would have bought my mother.  My mother loved Alfred Dunner clothes.  They are comfortable and well-made (sold in nicer department stores as opposed to Walmart or Target).  It gave me great pleasure to buy Helen nice clothes.

After several years of taking Helen grocery shopping, she took a turn for the worse with her knees and her general health.  She could no longer maintain the relative independence that she had.  She was moved into an assisted living facility.  She was very fortunate to secure a room at a nice facility in the Ballantyne area of Charlotte.  They were required to accept a certain number of Medicaid patients.  In my mind, it was like Helen won the lottery.  But she was very sad to leave her home of more than 10 years.

I wish I could say that I kept up my monthly visits.  I did not.  Laura and I did visit her, though, sometimes together and sometimes on our own.  As Laura had children, Helen doted over them as if they were her own grandchildren.  She delighted in them.  When Laura's first was born, somehow Helen found a way to have a red rocker delivered to Laura's home.  This impressed us as she had only a few dollars per month that she could spend on "extras."

Sometimes I would eat a meal with Helen and her friends at her new "home." On one occasion, there was a family night at the facility.   I attended as Helen's daughter.  She was so pround to have me there.  It was a privilege for me as well. My mother was gone and Elizabeth was gone, but here again was another Bonus Mom dropped into my life.  How good God is!

Unfortunately, my time with Helen ended in a way that I feared that it would.  I had asked the assisted living center if they would be willing to take my number and call me if something happened to Helen.  Due to HIPAA laws, they would not do so. One day when Laura, her children, and I went to visit Helen, we found out that she had passed away.  She had been gone for 3 weeks.  It had probably been 2 months since I had seen her.

We felt awful, needless to say.  Why did I wait so long?  Life gets in the way.    It is easy to get lazy about visiting our older friends.  She was truly precious to me.  She was a gift that I took forgranted, over time.  If I could go back, I would be more consistent in my time with her.  But there is no going back.

I imagine that she is in Heaven now and she has met my mom, Dolores, and Elizabeth, my first bonus mom. They laugh about me and my silly ways.  They also talk about how much they love me.  They see from afar how God is changing me. How I have learned from them and continue to learn and grow. And they cheer me on.  

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. 
Hebrews 12:1-3 NIV