A Helpless Old Man Offered a Gift of Faith To a Summer Volunteer

The name of the place was the Home for the Dying. It was in Calcutta.

I was there, spending part of my summer volunteering for Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity. And I hated it. Every morning, I fed, bathed and attended to the destitute and dying, plucked from the streets of Calcutta, in the attempt to give them a few peaceful moments before they died of tuberculosis, of AIDS, or of just years of neglect and malnutrition. I kept waiting for one of them to say "thank you," to give me a smile, to show a little appreciation for my efforts. I had come, I thought, to put my faith into action. I discovered I had very little with which to act upon.

One of my main duties was to work with a crotchety old man whose right arm and leg had withered from disuse. It was my responsibility to massage his stick-like limbs, gently stretching the atrophied muscles in the hopes of getting him to walk again.

The man was absolutely dead-opposed to the kind of physical torture to which I was subjecting his frail, old body. As soon as I was done massaging him, he would begin to wince. He knew I was about to hurt him. No matter how delicately I attempted to stretch his feeble leg, he would scream out, "Mago!", or -- "Mommy" in his language.

Every day, we endured each other. We would walk around the room, he leaning heavily on me with every tiny step he took with his bad leg. It took almost an hour each day, but he showed some improvement.

On my second to last day, I sat with him on his cot while I waited to receive the jar of massage cream, which was being used by another volunteer. He had a bad-looking cut on his arm, and he asked me for "Boroline," which was a kind of antiseptic ointment. I retrieved it from the medicine cabinet and rubbed it on his wound. I returned it to the cabinet and sat back down next to him. He pointed to an old scar on my knee and said, "Boroline." I smiled and said, "Yeah, I could use a little Boroline."

He then wiped off the cream I had put on his arm minutes ago, and he dabbed it onto my knee. Slowly, carefully, he worked that little bit of ointment with a mother's care and concern until the Boroline was completely rubbed in.

It was such a small gesture in itself, but it meant the world to me. At that moment, I could almost hear Mother Teresa saying that we all must "do small things with great love." In one sublime moment, the helpless helped me, gave me the faith I had been lacking.