This past summer, I, along with some other family members,
visited my ninety-seven-year-old great-aunt. Eunice lives independently, in a small garden
apartment. She is truly an
inspiration in her attitude, her pluckiness and verve in living.
For many years in post retirement, Eunice volunteered at the
hospital where she had been employed.
She would visit patients, distributing magazines, mail, and books. Faithfully every week even when her own
infirmities would bother her, she would tend to her hospital charges. Her last volunteering occurred in the
last 2 years. She had to stop due
to compression fractures in her spine, which make it extremely difficult and
painful to walk.
As that volunteer door closed, she embarked in another
volunteer opportunity- She calls the “shut-ins” from her church, those
individuals who no longer can routinely get out of their homes for visits,
church, shopping, etc. She sits in her chair with the phone beside her and calls those who need a
friendly voice or a listening ear. She keeps detailed charts regarding whom she
calls and their individual needs. As she was telling us about her new venture, she stopped, paused and said, "You know, it just occurred to me that most of the people I am calling are in their sixties and seventies!"
She could just as easily stop her volunteering. If anyone, she has certainly earned
it. At her age and physical ailments, she could have rested on her laurels. Yet she has chosen to
concentrate on what she can do rather what she cannot.
Do I do that?
When I am faced with an unpleasant situation or at least some type of
change in my life, do I embrace that change or do I want to curl up in my own
room and throw myself a pity party?
Whenever I am tempted to rail against my "lot in life" I need to be reminded of Eunice. No matter what I am given, I have the choice to either work with it, or not. May I have the strength to carry on in such a dignified and graceful manner.
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