Greetings: This poignant story crossed my desk a little while ago up
here in Parkinsaw, MI, and I thought the list members would enjoy
reading it.
John Bjork (60/20)
A View from the Lighter Side
THE OLD FISHERMAN
Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance
of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. We lived downstairs and rented
the upstairs rooms to out patients at the clinic. One summer evening
as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to
see a truly awful looking man. "Why, he's hardly taller than my
eight-year-old," I thought as I stared at the stooped, shriveled body.
But the appalling thing was his face --lopsided from swelling, red and
raw. Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, "Good evening. I've come to
see if you've a room for just one night. I came for a treatment this
morning from the eastern shore, and there's no bus 'til morning." He
told me he'd been hunting for a room since noon but with no success, no
one seemed to have a room. "I guess it's my face...I know it looks
terrible, but my doctor says with a few more treatments..." For a moment
I hesitated, but his next words convinced me: "I could sleep in this
rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves early in the morning." I
told him we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch. I went
inside and finished getting supper. When we were ready, I asked the old
man if he would join us. "No thank you. I have plenty." And he held up
a brown paper bag. When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the
porch to talk with him a few minutes. It didn't take long time to see
that this old man had an oversized heart crowded into that tiny body.
He told me he fished for a
living to support his daughter, her five children, and her husband, who
was hopelessly crippled from a back injury. He didn't tell it by way
of complaint; in fact, every other sentence was preface with a thanks
to God for a blessing. He was grateful that no pain accompanied his
disease, which was apparently a form of skin
cancer.
He thanked God for giving him the strength to keep going. At
bedtime,
we put a camp cot in the children's room for him. When I got up in the
morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and the little man was out
on
the porch. He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus,
haltingly, as if asking
a great favor, he said, "Could I please come back and stay the next
time
I have a treatment? I won't put you out a bit. I can sleep fine in
a chair."
He paused a moment and then added, "Your children made me feel at
home.
Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don't seem to mind."
I told him he was welcome to come again. And on his next trip he
arrived
a little after seven in the morning. As a gift, he brought a big fish
and
a quart of the largest oysters I had ever seen. He said he had
shucked
them that morning before he left so that they'd be nice and fresh. I
knew his
bus left at 4:00 a.m. and I wondered what time he had to get up in
order to do this for us.
In the years he came to stay overnight with us there was never a
time that he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from his
garden.
Other times we received packages in the mail, always by special
delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or
kale, every
leaf carefully washed. Knowing that he must walk three miles to mail
these, and knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly
precious. When
I received these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment
our next-door neighbor made after he left that first morning. "Did
you keep that awful looking man
last night? I turned him away! You can lose roomers by putting up
such people!"
Maybe we did lose roomers once or twice. But oh! If only they could
have known him, perhaps their illness' would have been easier to bear. I
know our family always will
be grateful to have known him; from him we learned what it was to
accept
the bad without complaint and the good with gratitude to God.
Recently I was visiting a friend who has a greenhouse, As she
showed
me her flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden
chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms. But to my great surprise, it was
growing in an old dented, rusty bucket. I thought to myself, "If this
were my plant, I'd put it in the loveliest container I had!"
My friend changed my mind. "I ran short of pots," she explained,
"and
knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn't mind
starting out in this old pail. It's just for a little while, till I
can put
it out in the garden." She must have wondered why I laughed so
delightedly, but I was
imagining just such a scene in heaven. "Here's an especially
beautiful one," God might have said when he came to the soul of the
sweet old fisherman. "He won't mind starting in this small body." All
this happened long ago -- and now, in God's garden, how tall this
lovely soul must stand.
