By: Carly Caprio
A client left me a voicemail today. In truth, it was the second in two days. A bit of edge chalks the end of her words matched by a tired tone. She needs food.
I check the time, “Last call of the day,” I think to myself, “This ought to be interesting.”
I’m familiar with clients who need a faceless voice to release frustrations. Anonymity helps with catharsis. Reluctantly, I dial the number. Two rings and click, the monotone voice answers, “Hello.”
“Hello,” I say. I tell her my name and ask how I can help. She tells me about the two weeks trying to get a real person on the line at various offices. She needs help. Her fridge is empty. She’s hungry but the funds to purchase food have run out. Her voice divulges a deeper solemnness, something more than a few missed calls.
I pause and wonder how many times this woman has reached for a helping hand only for it to slip like butter from her fingertips. So, I ask, “What’s your name?”
Compassion Exists in the Smallest Gestures
Instead, she tells me her story. COVID-19 has left her out of work for months with bills now stacking double her unemployment check.
Last month pneumonia seized her lungs, restricting her to a hospital bed for 2 weeks. The doctors say she needs surgery ASAP, else her sinuses will drip liquid into her lungs.
Her husband is in hospice. His cancer, now two brain tumors deep, has spread. “It’s bad” she sighed, “39 years we’ve been together.” Then, she quiets in the wake of her spoken hardships, perhaps surprised she’s revealed so much to a perfect stranger.
I’m short on words and already well into overtime. In a feeble attempt to respond to a story where words seem so small, I say, “It sounds like there are so many things out of your control right now.” A heavy sigh escapes her lips, “Like you wouldn’t even believe. My husband knows he won’t be around much longer. You know what his wish is? All he wants is for me to get myself set up, so he can go knowing I’m taken care of. That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do but I can’t get anyone on the phone to help me.”
Tears swell the corners of my eyes as a wave of compassion floods over me. Gently I add, “He really loves you, doesn’t he?” Her voice breaks.
Suddenly, the despondent woman I began this call with melted.
With tenderness she responds, “He does, he really does,” her voice barely concealing the throbbing pain palpating inside, “You know, he kissed my hand this morning? Right before he went into the bathroom. He gave me that look like he knows, he knows it could be any day, then he just kissed my hand,” she paused, lingering in the memory, “I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.”
In the heavy silence that follows, words seem like drivel. So, I join her in the moment of feeling the weight of the burden she’s been carrying for quite some time. I reflect on how utterly wrong my assumptions were. I had only heard the anger and not the pain, the bitterness in her tone and not the years of ache, the curtness and not the grief of losing the one she loves. In the days that follow, I can let go of this moment, but she will walk on carrying the loss of the life she once knew.
A few days later, her husband passed away kissing the palm of her hand and rubbing her face because he loved the softness of her skin. To him, she said, “I love you with everything I am. Take my soul and love. I’ll be here but you need to go. I know you don’t want to leave me but go.” With that, he took his last breath.
By sharing her story, she hopes to remind others that great love still exists. “The love and trust I had for my husband, and he had for me, is so treasured,” she said. “I wish it for every couple out there.”
Kindness Costs Nothing
I regret my narrow-minded presumptions before the call because the real person behind that voicemail is scared and hungry. She’s alone and her whole world is crumbling before her eyes yet here she is, unabridged and wholly beautiful, entrusting her story to a stranger.
Perhaps beyond the familiar shields we use to protect ourselves, lies the inner strength of humanity (one human shouldering other’s burdens the way others have shouldered ours).
It’s in the smiling of a stranger.
The opening of a door.
The kissing of a hand.
The asking of a name.
It can simply be the intentional moments of kindness that imprint us, writing letters of love on our hearts. Ones we’ll carry onwards & outwards like tides surging to each corner of the globe. Ones that resound from small ripples into waves of power, the likes of which we cannot fathom.
So, in a world where we can be anything, why not be kind?
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