I've been delivering Meals on Wheels to an elderly gentleman who's all alone and seems frozen in his easy chair like a statue in the park. Nothing changes in the quiet trailer he lives in half dozing with little to say. His unappealing strict diet leaves little to be desired. His newspapers go unread as they stack up by the door.
In an effort to be helpful, I scrapped the snow off his entry ramp with a dust pan this winter. That's when I began to talk to him asking about his family. His wife's obituary and picture sit on the table beside him. He has no children, but hers, as they were married for twenty years. I offered to take the multiple bags of aluminum cans stacked along his driveway to the recyclers bringing the money to him, but didn't have a truck to haul them in and they won't fit in my little car.
Recently his meal was untouched on the counter from the previous day. I should have removed it when dropping off the new one. Then he was in the hospital. I wondered if it was because of the meal left out. When he returned now in a hospital bed set up in the tiny livingroom resuming his meals, I made sure to put them in the refrigerator.
He's dying and talks about it often as I sit at his bedside trying to get him to drink a little water offering words of comfort. Worrying when I leave, will he be okay all alone with no one there at his appointed time to return to our Heavenly Father. All alone with no one, except Hospice & me.
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