FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn
*
Jewell-Like Senior
Visits Are Missed
It has been nearly a year since coronavirus knocked the world tush over teakettle. Perhaps no group has been more upended than senior citizens who not only are among the most vulnerable to the heinous disease, but can feel lonely and quarantined even in the best of times.
Indeed, not being able to visit my 94-year-old father in the Ventura Townehouse for much of the past 11 months due to COVID-19 lockdowns has made my empathy surge for those elderly folks who have no one to visit them even outside with safe social distancing.
This, in turn, has me thinking about a former Townehouse resident named Jewell. Thanks to Ventura County’s Caregivers Assisting The Elderly, a sparkling jewel of an organization, and its student volunteer program, Jewell did have visitors.
Jewell with her favorite scarf.
“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,” recalls my daughter, Dallas, who joined the program as a high school sophomore. “But the most requested service is simply providing a few minutes of company.”
Caregivers as friendship givers.
“Jewell was a natural storyteller who delighted in the smallest details,” Dallas shares. “I learned that as a young woman, she and her mother moved to California from Missouri. Jewell 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.”
When Dallas moved off to college, her younger brother filled her absence visiting Jewell. Too, Dallas stayed in touch with letters and visited during holidays and summers.
“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.”
Dallas laughingly remembers their lunch outings together and how her frail companion sprinkled Splenda on most everything, including syrupy pancakes. But an even sweeter memory was the time Jewell asked Dallas and Greg to drive her to the drugstore 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 put on her refrigerator.”
“I miss you when you’re away,” Jewell told them.
“We miss you, too,” they replied.
When the photos were developed, Jewell mailed them copies and included 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 in my living room. Jewell’s smile was contagious – still is.”
Ten years ago last 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.”
As the final line of “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway says, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
It’s also pretty to think of all our seniors getting COVID-19 vaccinations and again enjoying in-person visits that are precious as jewels.
* * *
Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.
Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com