I was in a hurry. It was incredibly hot and sunny outside as I rode my bike into downtown Webster Groves coming back from a friends house and one my way to another friends house for a BBQ. Something, or rather, someone caught my eye as I blasted down the road in hot pursuit of a cold beer and good company. An older man in long sleeves and jeans was standing leaning a little against a brick wall. Normally this would be quite unassuming but immediately my brain flagged this as a level 10 emergency.
No one would go outside in the heat dressed like this and the old man was paused not in the shade but in the sun. I've always had a pretty good sense of when I need to help people and that sense is quick to confirm in me when I listen to it. This time that sense was lit up telling me to help the guy. So I grabbed a fistful of breaks and whipped around to go see what was going on. I roll up and say something like," Excuse me sir, are you alright? Can I help you?"....a brief pause and then the man replied.....,"No, I'm not ok, I'm trying to get back to [my retirement home] just up the street." I tried to help him walk but it was pretty clear this guy was not going to make one step let alone cross the street and walk a 100 yards.
I started racking my brain; do I call the cops, an ambulance, a loved one, the retirement home itself? I tried signaling to a few bystanders but there were few and they were unable to help. Just then another kind soul answered the call of a stranger in need. A lady pulls up in her car and rolls down the window and asks in a beautifully gentle voice, "Can I offer you a ride, sir?" We load up the gentlemen into the car and make the short drive (for me even shorter bike ride) back to the retirement home. Here is when the two nuggets of this story brought tears to my eyes.
As the kind lady and I started to unload and guide the old man inside the front door, there was a point where the guard rail gave way and we needed two people to support him. I was behind the old man in case I needed to catch him and he suddenly called out, "Where are you, John?" As I rushed in to support his left side he goes "Oh, there you are". This reminded me instantly of Matthew 25:40; "And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’" Jesus doesn't ask us for a lot. This practice in charity took me a handful of minutes and relatively no physical excretion or cost. The first nugget is that we are called to be in a constant disposition of being open to practice charity. It was the answer to that impulse to check on the old man that was the most important part of this story. He could've just as well told me he was going for a walk and stopped to smell the flowers and that everything was alright. However, as was required, the helping of the lowest who might who can't repay your kindness and might even forgot the whole ordeal is the worthiest cause which will not go unrewarded by the King of Kings during our judgement after death. Especially being that it was the 4th of July, a day where we are all called to remember and imitate the virtues of our Founding Fathers who sought to give courageously. A good citizen is one that is ready to assist another in need for no other reason than it is the right thing to do.
The second nugget came from some seemingly harmless banter between the kind lady and the old man as we were unloading him from the car. The kind lady was making conversation to put the man at ease and brought up that an old friend of hers used to live in the same retirement home. She joked that it was some 10 years ago her friend lived here and that she was pretty sure she wasn't there anymore (a reference to her supposed passing.) The old man replied in a dejected tone," I hope she isn't" This broke my heart. My grandma was in assisted living for well over a decade with Alzheimer's that thankfully robbed her of only her memories. She was still a bubbly extrovert who would stop and talk to everyone in the home even if she couldn't remember their names. It helped that in her later years, my mom would visit my Grandma daily or at the least a few times a week. To me, it was clear that this old man was experiencing some hopelessness in the retirement home. Perhaps he could remember the people that no longer visited him or he could remember the people that used to live there but had now passed on. I can only imagine the worst depravity one can experience on what must be likened to a lonely escalator to death. To me it was a call to remind everyone; love your older family members and encourage your friends to do the same. In college, one of my very old cousins who was 1 of 4 remaining Rausch men on the planet had developed very bad dementia and was coincidentally moved into a unit in the same town I went to college. I tried visiting him but it was during covid and the unit was on total lockdown for the "safety of the residents" (some people are not familiar the concept that all men die, but few men can truly live) Undeterred I wrote a letter that very day full of warm greetings and recalling old memories of happy times. This letter was never answered, but again it was about being willing to try to help. So give your grandparents, older uncles/aunts, cousins or mentors from your childhood a call and just chat with them or better yet a visit.
To close. It only takes a minute to respond to the impulse of a good consciences. It may take a long time to form your conscience and breed a disposition to practicing virtue but that is the task we are called to continually. On occasion we will be asked to practice that virtue in a concrete way and we will be measured on the last day on how we respond.
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