Wynifred's journey

My Aunt Wynifred was the last of three (including the step-dad) parents and four siblings. Osteomylitis had devoured her bones and she told me that the doctor had described her back bone as ‘turning into chalk.’ The last five years of her life she was unable to walk. She sat up in her bed and watched television and read the newspaper and talked on the phone. This was her life and she felt useless. She lived in England where the local doctor made house visits, one day when the doctor visited her, Aunt Wyn asked him if there was any way she could hasten her death because she was a burden to her country. The visiting doctor sat down on her bed and explained something to her. He said,” I come from India, I and my parents worked very hard so I could get through medical school. My parents gave me everything they had and when I finished medical school they had no money left. I came to England to work because now I have to support my parents and I need more money than I can get in India. Whenever I come to visit you the National Health Office pays me a little money, I send a much as I can to my parents to care for them in their old age. To me you are not a burden but a blessing.

The National Health Service provided a home care giver who visited Aunt Win every day; gave her breakfast, made her bed, cleaned her room and cooked two more meals which were left on a tray by her bedside. When I visited Aunt Win the care giver told me. “I have two other patients, they grumble and weep and think I am their slave. Whenever I visit your Aunt she welcomes me, and speaks kindly. She has asked that my children sometimes visit her and is as proud of them as if they were her own children. My life is difficult just now and I feel that no one really cares about me, except your aunt, she takes a personal interest and prays for me at night. I don’t know what I would do without her.

I think my Aunt Wyn regarded her invalid years as a kind of pilgrimage, she had been walking with God when her spine deteriorated. She faced a journey into helplessness that was frightening. Like Abraham, she journeed in faith. Like Abraham she had a promise to sustain her; the end of her journey would bring her to God himself, and the realization of every good hope. In her own time and place she was being Abraham.