Friends

Ogma, Summer 2021

I never expected my volunteer experience with the elderly to be anything other than a kind of bootcamp, a preparation for caring for my parents someday. I feared old people, their  illnesses, their loneliness, their pain. I wanted to get toughened up. 

“Can I have someone, you know, easy?” I asked Maris, the director of Corp Communicare in Philadelphia, an agency she founded to connect the young -in my case, about 27 -with the very old. We squatted on small stools in the preschool Maris rented as her evening headquarters. 

            Maris, not much younger than my parents at the time, half-smiled in either amusement or disbelief. 

            “I’ll see what I can do,“ she said. 

             ***

Dorothy’s apartment sat on the top floor of a bleak rowhouse. Every Sunday I rode my bike to the street outside her building and looked up to her third floor window. Since she didn’t have a phone, we arranged for her to give me a thumbs up if she felt well enough to have me visit. She always felt well enough. There also wasn’t a buzzer, so her crabby landlord agreed for some reason to let me in each time. He awaited my arrival, perched in his defunct jewelry store window. I climbed the front steps, he turned the lock, we mumbled unenthusiastic greetings, and I stepped into the darkness. 

Trudging up the three stories, most of the overhead lightbulbs burned out above me, I’d find Dorothy at the top, waiting beside her open door.  Her mischievous blue eyes and matching smile beckoned me inside. The sight and smell of the junk-filled apartment often hit me like walking into a wall. There were piles of books, clothes, papers, books, stuff, everywhere. A pervasive rotten, fecal smell caused me to gag, turn away. Most of the time I could manage it well enough to maintain composure and find a place to sit on her newspaper-covered couch. She offered me tea in a dirty flowered cup and a muffin found amidst the decades of dust bunnies under the couch. 

My main job was to read. Dorothy loved to read-hence the piles of books and papers all over the place-but her eyes couldn’t see well enough to do so. She also loved cats, but, as she wisely stated multiple times, “I can’t take care of myself, how can I take care of a cat?” So, she clutched a grey stuffed cat she named Bell, for its silver bell attached to its collar, while I read her stories about cats from a book she found in a garbage pile somewhere. Week by week, I spent my hour first making small talk about my work, my life, Dorothy’s work (She’d once been a receptionist) and life (Although she kept her long past, her family, a tight secret). Then she’d lay back on her cluttered couch and listen to me read. I found myself enjoying the soothing cat stories, too. We’d smile, trade looks, laughter together. 

The years passed. We kept talking and reading. I picked up her groceries she left at the bottom of the stairs, or anything else too heavy for her to carry. Dorothy gave me gifts: a pair of golden mugs, articles clipped from old newspapers, books, so many books.  I kidded her about her landlord, “He’s such a sweetheart!” I’d say. She had a particular interest in my library assistant job at the all-women’s college, Bryn Mawr. She asked me to describe the library, the campus, to tell her about the many characters amongst the students and faculty. I think she wished she went there.  I brought friends in to meet her, my cat, and her favorite foods: doughnuts and Coke. 

Over time, I saw all the sides of Dorothy’s personality. When the Philadelphia summer heat and humidity rose to extremes, she answered the door either naked or topless, a funny smile on her face, acting like nothing was unusual. She liked to tease me. When I asked her if she thought I’d marry someday, she smirked and said, “No I think you’ll die an old maid.” But once, after I entered her apartment and was confronted by a particularly bad wave of odor, she said, “I’m sorry if I’m so disgusting,” hiding her face in sadness and shame. 

One day, after many years, Dorothy asked me to bathe her. We moved into the bathroom, where she undressed and sat on a chair in the shower stall, naked, hot water pressing down, steam rising up in both of our faces. I took soap and a ragged wash cloth and moved it around her body. When I finished, I turned the water off and helped her dry and dress. In this quiet moment she exposed her deepest need, and by doing so helped me grow beyond my fear and limitations. 

***

            Dorothy eventually had to move into a nursing home. Her landlord called to tell me to look over her things because he would soon throw it all in the trash. I rushed over, disgusted by the way he said he’d piled everything she owned into one garbage heap. Not knowing what to take, I reached into the mess and pulled out a box of pictures and a matching white and pink floral china cake plate and sugar bowl – ephemeral, breakable things-like Dorothy, like me. I still use them.

A few years later, when Dorothy died, Maris and I attended a small memorial for her at her church. There were about five of us there who knew Dorothy, but I was the only one who called her a friend. I brought the pictures and showed everyone how pretty the young Dorothy had been, how once her apartment had been neat as a pin, something she felt proud of, something she wanted to remember by taking a photo. She must of known, it could not, would not, last.