Does She Count

Iwrote this in 1995 in honor of my beautiful aunt, I called Toots.


A frail older woman, sitting in her wheelchair, the colors and shapes of this world stolen from her sight. The sounds of life robbed from her ears. All she has is her thoughts, but what are they? She keeps them bundled up in a neat small package inside of her mind. So thightly secured that she can't open it to let them out.


Pain...suffering... lonliness, she knows them all too well. But she never complains.


As I go about my life I can find no one to compare to this simple, humble woman.


Does she count?...She has touched my heart and a piece of it will always belong to her.







What made me think of this was when I went to church tonight.


I was walking up to go to communion. In front of me was a woman about my age. She looked very tired and disheveled. In front of her was an older man...about 90 or so, walking hunched over a cane. Each step was a struggle. The woman in front of me, I assumed to be his daughter was guiding him with her hands on each side of his waist. As I looked at him I saw an old man, on the outside, but I looked at him from within and saw a young soul inside of this old shell. The shell was breaking down, but the inside was just as it began but much much wiser. After he took communion, his daughter took it, then grabbed his hand and walked down the aisle hand and hand with her dad. This just gripped my heart.


Back at my seat, I knelt and wept, from the beauty and pain of this scene, the determination this man had, to take that long hike up to the alter to receive communion, the committment this woman had to her dad.