No Fumar!

Through my great and benevolent company, I am involved with Meals on Wheels. I started volunteering with Meals delivery because it seemed like an easy way to help others and also to get to know some of my coworkers a little better since I would be delivering those meals with them. My delivery days happen about every two months and on a Thursday. It's a small amount of time to give, takes about an hour to deliver 10-12 meals in southern Irving, an older part of town. Mostly elderly people but there are a couple of younger recipients on my route that seem able to work for a living and capable of cooking meals on their own, but it is not up to me to decide who gets the meals and who doesn't. This used to bother me when I first delivered meals but I have since just let it go, I don't know what those people's lot in life might be. Duane is my partner delivering Meals. Duane is a long-time employee of my company, he is a manager of a department , and a good guy with a sense of humor. The first time I delivered Meals with Duane, he drove, and I got motion sick and barfed during the delivery. I am easily sickened by erratic driving, and Duane's driving certainly qualified as erratic. Delivering Meals entails driving around neighborhoods and in and out of driveways and making a few u-turns, so you get an idea of how one might get car-sick during the delivery. After that first delivery with Duane driving, I am now the driver and Duane is the navigator. The Visiting Nurses Association coordinates the meals, they give us a list of people and their addresses and a copy of a Mapsco address grid to help us find the houses. We pick up two large ice chests at a church in central Irving, one contains the hot meals (a 3-compartment plastic tray containing a mystery meat, vegetable, and a dessert) and the other ice chest contains individual plastic bags of a half-pint of milk, bread, and eating utensils. The people get these types of meals delivered Monday through Friday, just at lunch, but they are on their own for meals on the weekends. It's really not much of a meal, I couldn't survive on that one meal, but hopefully these people are provided additional meals by friends or family the rest of the time. Some of the people like to talk, we might be the only person they get to talk to all day, so we get to hear all about their lives. I always ask how they are doing, if they are feeling okay, and if they need anything. I cannot do anything for these people myself, but I could pass along to the VNA any needs that the old folks might have. I hope I make them feel like someone cares a little bit about them, they are not forgotten.

Today, at the last stop of the route, we delivered two meals to an elderly couple living in an apartment with four or five chihuahuas. When I rang the doorbell, the dogs went bonkers, an all out barkfest. As I stood there, I could smell a strong odor of cigarettes coming from somewhere. On their door was a note telling visitors, in Spanish (NO FUMAR!) and English, NO SMOKING. From inside, I heard a voice say "Come on in!". I have spoken to this couple before, they never came across as being unstable, so I felt comfortable entering their apartment. When I opened the door, I was hit with a wall of cigarette smoke. Maybe they were okay with their own smoking but didn't want any additional smokers in their apartment. There were three people in the apartment and all three were smoking. The gent in the wheelchair was smoking with an oxygen canula in his nose. That was a odd sight, a person needing oxygen to breathe but puffing on a cigarette at the same time. I asked them the same questions I asked the others, are you okay, how are you feeling, and do you need anything. Obviously they didn't need cigarettes. The guy in the wheelchair with the canula in his nose said he was a born-again Christian. He said he had been wealthy two different times in his life, the Lord had taught him how to make money but had not shown him how to spend it, and now he lived on social security. He went on to say how grateful he was for us to bring him meals, he was grateful for a roof over his head, and grateful for the shoe (note: singular) on his foot. I looked down and for the first time noticed he indeed only needed one shoe because one leg had been amputated just below the knee. I said something stupid like "Yep, you only need one shoe!". After that, I started walking toward the door and quickly spouting exit words like "Well, all right, take care now".

You never quite know what you will see when you enter someone elses world.