Caregivers is “Jewell” of an Organization
“Giving does not empty your hands,” says my son, Greg, wise beyond his years. “It prepares them to be filled.”
Too, giving prepares your heart to be filled. Caregivers Assisting The Elderly, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary in Ventura County, is proof of this.
Jewell Butcher with her favorite scarf.
A decade past, as a high school sophomore, my daughter became a volunteer for Caregivers’ “Building Bridges” intergenerational program. Her heart was filled by the experience.
“After school and on weekends, groups of teenagers supervised by Caregiver adults visit the homes of senior citizens and help them with gardening, cleaning, and other household chores,” Dallas notes. “But the most requested service is simply providing a few minutes of company.”
Caregivers as friendship givers.
By coincidence, Jewell Butcher lived alone less than a mile away from Dallas.
It was no coincidence Jewell’s house was freshly painted as bright yellow as a sunflower on the outside and inside the blue of a cloudless summer sky. Jewell, then 76, had recently survived a heart attack and when she returned home she wanted to be surrounded by cheerful colors.
“The obvious pleasure she found in our company filled my heart,” Dallas recalls of her first Caregivers visit with Jewell. “She told us a little about herself, but mostly asked questions – about school, about our families, about our dreams.”
Bidding goodbye, Jewell hugged Dallas and warmly said: “Please come back soon.”
Dallas did. She dropped by “The Sunflower House” frequently. Jewell would make tea and the two would talk for hours on end.
“She was a natural storyteller who delighted in the smallest details,” Dallas remembers. “I learned that as a young woman, Jewell and her mother moved to California from Missouri. She had lived in Ventura for more than half a century and I loved hearing what my hometown was once like.”
Long before Caregivers assisted Jewell, she was the caregiver for her mother through a long terminal illness.
“Even when sharing a sad story,” Dallas marvels, “Jewell would end it with a smile and say, ‘I sure am lucky. I’ve had such a blessed life.’ She was an inspiration.”
Around the time Dallas moved off to college, Jewell moved into an assisted living facility. They talked about the similar new chapters in their lives: “I was making new friends in the dorms and going to parties on weekends; she was making new friends in the dining hall and going to bingo nights.”
In Dallas’s absence, her younger brother visited Jewell.
“She never married and had no children, but I like to think Greg and I became her surrogate grandchildren,” Dallas says, adding happily: “Other Townehouse residents often assumed we were her grandkids and she always smiled and never corrected them.”
Going out to lunch delighted Jewell and Dallas laughingly remembers how her frail companion sprinkled Splenda on most everything, even syrupy pancakes and crepes.
But an even sweeter memory was the time Jewell asked Dallas and Greg to drive her to the store because she dearly wanted a disposable camera.
“We had to go right away in the middle of a visit,” Dallas retells. “When we finally returned to her room the urgency of her request became clear – she wanted to take a picture of the three of us to hang on her refrigerator.”
“I miss you when you’re away,” Jewell told them.
“We miss you, too.”
When the photos were developed, Jewell mailed copies to Dallas and Greg. She also enclosed a snapshot of her wearing a sky-blue scarf Dallas knitted as a gift the previous Christmas.
“I love that photo,” Dallas says. “I have it in a frame on my dresser. Jewell’s smile was contagious – still is.”
Having one’s heart filled eventually exacts a steep price: heartache. Three years ago this week a brief illness claimed Jewell’s life at age 86.
“I was living in Indiana and as always sent my dear friend a card for Valentine’s Day,” Dallas shares. “Jewell died on February 12, but I like to think she received my card before she passed.”
I like to think so, too. I know this: Caregivers is a Jewell of an organization.
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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for the Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. His new memoir WOODEN & ME is now available.
WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the
Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”
- Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com
- Unsigned paperbacks or Kindle ebook can be purchased here at Amazon
