It’s not like we had a definitive plan. There was no clear-cut direction to help my mother’s ninety-one-year-old friend; no desert grace to guide us on a desert journey (refer backstory: https://carolinmparadis.com/2024/02/14/desert-journey/). We called her Aunty Pam. And the tone of Aunty Pam’s calls became increasingly desperate. Agitated and confused, it was difficult to discern her exact situation.
Desert Fall
After a fall in January 2021, where she remained on her apartment floor for a day before discovery by a concerned neighbour and a resulting sojourn in the Montreal General Hospital, we didn’t know what she was experiencing since being transferred to a rehabilitation hospital. The state of her hearing aids was unfathomable, and telephone conversations nigh on impossible. She missed half of what you said. But the last two calls before I jumped in my van with my sister-in-law, Dorothée, and drove from Toronto to Montreal, changed everything. Acutely distressed, Aunty Pam’s last call was to Dorothée.
And Dorothée called me.
“I understand you have things to do. Whether you can join me or not, either way I’m going to Montreal.”
Aunty Pam had rattled my stalwart sister-in-law. Something was off at the rehab hospital.
It was Monday. Apart from a colonoscopy scheduled for Friday, my work calendar wouldn’t get busy for another week.
“Well,” I responded to Dorothée, “it wouldn’t put me out not to attend my Friday appointment.” Followed by a nano-second of consideration I added, “Let me see if I can cancel and I’ll get back to you.”
In my van the next morning, we headed to Montreal. Aunty Pam had told us we could stay in her apartment. The arrangement was to collect the spare key from her neighbours across the hall.
Desert Landing
It’s one thing to offer someone help. It’s completely different to do the helping when it entails a six-hour winter drive to a colder and icier city than Toronto, during a pandemic, and with limited information on what to expect when we arrived. Were we simply trying to do a good thing for an aged friend, or was this a call from God? And how do you to tell the difference?
I had often said to Aunty Pam: “If I can help, I will. If I can’t, I will tell you.”
I had assured if she needed to move, she could count on me. I knew my cousin and sister-in-law would help, too. But Aunty Pam always shrugged away our offers.
“You’re so far away. It’s too much bother,” she insisted. “You have your families and you all have enough to do already.”
But suddenly plunking oneself in the middle of someone’s life, someone you rarely saw, with no intimate details, as in paying bills and a million other things, and now, when in a desperate state, they need your help. Well, it was like landing in the middle of a desert with miles of sand and no defining landmarks to guide the journey.
Prayer became our everyday mainstay. Once in Montreal, we encountered hurdles and roadblocks at every juncture. Often, we didn’t know what to do next. God became our go-to for direction for desert grace.
For me, the discourse was mostly during restless nights. For Dorothée, it was through her morning prayer ritual. She would share the words from her daily devotional. It was uncanny some days, the precise aligning of the reading for that day to our state of mind and emotion. It didn’t feel like grace, but grace was present.
“So, look for signs of My tender Presence as you go through this day. I disclose Myself to you in a vast variety of waysꟷ words of Scripture just when you need them, helpful words spoken through other people, ‘coincidences’ orchestrated by My Spirit, nature’s beauty, and so on. My Love for you is not passive; it actively chases after you and leaps into your life. Invite Me to open the eyes of your heart so you can ‘see’ Me blessing you in myriad ways ꟷ both small and great.”
Embracing Joy in His PresenceꟷJesus Always by Sarah Young, March 3 page 66, Thomas nelson, 2016
Desert Grace
And Grace was an actual person, and present. She lived with her husband, Ted, across the hall from Aunty Pam’s apartment.
Grace let us into Pam’s apartment, chatting all the while and filling in many blanks. It became clear the reason Aunty Pam had managed so well for so long. A couple who had fostered five children in their younger years had continued their caring ways with their elderly neighbour.
“If you girls are hungry, there’s a good pizza place nearby. There’s a flyer in with Pam’s mail; you can order from them.”
I turned to hide a smile. Closing in on retirement it always tickled me when someone referred to me as a girl. And for a moment, I felt younger. Especially when, in mid-sentence, Grace sagged to sit on Aunty Pam’s bed. Her energy mirroring the late afternoon sun streaming through the bedroom window as its brightness slipped below the building’s adjacent cliff peak. So, too, did Grace’s litany of explanations dim. We had heard she was in stage four cancer and had recently decided against further treatments.
My heart cracked. Instinctively, I wanted to sit beside Grace, put my arm around her shoulder and somehow flow my strength to her. But I didn’t know the woman. We had just met. Likely in the last stage of her life, this upbeat, kind, helpful and gracious woman’s perspective remained firmly fixed outward; concerned with her aged neighbour.
And here, too, lay grace. For Grace. She and Ted had not known until recently that Pam had friends in Toronto. In handing over the keys to Pam’s apartment, she was passing the baton of care to a younger generation. Just in time, laying down a worrisome burden she could no longer carry. A desert grace.
To be continued…