An unlikely friendship teaches one woman the importance of taking a chance on others.
Our families lived more than 450 miles away, so a few weeks before Thanksgiving one year, my then-husband and I decided to invite a guest over for the holiday. I called a senior center in the Dallas area and they suggested Ilse, a woman I imagined would be quiet, soft-spoken, serene. I was wrong.
The more time I spent with Ilse, the more she became like a surrogate grandma, albeit a saucy one. She wasn’t afraid to share her opinion with others or to ask me when I was finally going to have children. “You’re not getting any younger,” she’d say. Each time I stopped by her apartment, Ilse seemed more disconnected than the time before. Late one afternoon, she called from the emergency room to tell me she had tripped over her monstrous coffee table. Using the spare key she’d insisted I make months before, I searched her apartment for other trip hazards. The table had to go.
The following day, I returned her call but was unable to understand what she was saying. I drove her to the emergency room, where the doctor confirmed she had suffered a mild stroke. During the next few days, I dropped by her apartment, but she was no longer the vibrant, obstinate Ilse I knew. At the end of the week, I received an early-morning call from her caregiver. “Please come over now,” the woman said, her voice matter-of-fact. “She’s passed away.
I knew I couldn’t spend what she had left me on myself. Ilse was a friend I’d helped out of loyalty and respect, not with the expectation of being paid.
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