Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of Johns Hopkins
Hospital in Baltimore. We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to out patients
at the clinic. One summer evening as I
was fixing supper, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see a truly awful looking
man. "Why, he's hardly taller than my eight-year-old," I thought as I stared at
the stooped, shriveled body. But the appalling thing was his face -- lopsided from
swelling, red and raw. Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, "Good evening. I've
come to see if you've a room for just one night. I came for a treatment this morning from
the eastern shore, and there's no bus 'til morning."
He told me he'd been hunting for a room since noon but with no success, no one seemed
to have a room. "I guess it's my face...I know it looks terrible, but my doctor says
with a few more treatments..."
For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me: "I could sleep in this
rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves early in the morning."
I told him we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch. I went inside and
finished getting supper. When we were ready, I asked the old man if he would join us.
"No thank you. I have plenty." And he held up a
brown paper bag.
When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with him a few minutes.
It didn't take a long time to see that this old man had an oversized heart crowded into
that tiny body. He told me he fished for
a living to support his daughter, her five children, and her husband, who was hopelessly
crippled from a back injury.
He didn't tell it by way of complaint; in fact, every other sentence was preface with a
thanks to God for a blessing. He was grateful that no pain accompanied his disease, which
was apparently a form of skin cancer. He thanked God for giving him the strength to keep
going. At bedtime, we put a camp cot in the children's room for him. When I got up in the
morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and the little man was out on the porch. He
refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus, haltingly, as if asking a great
favor, he said, "Could I please come back and stay the next time I have a treatment?
I won't put you out a bit. I can sleep fine in a chair." He paused a moment and then
added, "Your children made me feel at home. Grownups are bothered by my face, but
children don't seem to mind." I told him he was welcome to come again. And on his
next trip he arrived a little after seven in the morning. As a gift, he brought a big fish
and a quart of the largest oysters I had ever seen. He said he had shucked them that
morning before he left so that they'd be nice and fresh. I knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m.
and I wondered what time he had to get up in order to do this for us.
In the years he came to stay overnight with us there was never a time that he did not
bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from his garden. Other times we received packages
in the mail, always by special delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young
spinach or kale, every leaf carefully washed. Knowing that he must walk three miles to
mail these, and knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly precious. When I
received these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment our next-door neighbor
made after he left that first morning. "Did you keep that awful looking man last
night? I turned him away! You can lose roomers by putting up such people!" Maybe we
did lose roomers once or twice. But oh! If only they could have known him, perhaps their
illness' would have been easier to bear. I know our family always will be grateful to have
known him; from him we learned what it was to accept the bad without complaint and the
good with gratitude to God.
Recently I was visiting a friend who has a greenhouse, As she showed me her flowers, we
came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms. But
to my great surprise, it was growing in an old dented, rusty bucket. I thought to myself,
"If this were my plant, I'd put it in the loveliest container I had!" My friend
changed my mind. "I ran short of pots," she explained, "and knowing how
beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn't mind starting out in this old pail.
It's just for a little while, till I can put it out in the garden."
She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was imagining just such a
scene in heaven. "Here's an especially beautiful one," God might have said when
he came to the soul of the sweet old fisherman. "He won't mind starting in this small
body." All this happened long ago -- and now, in God's garden, how tall this lovely
soul must stand.
by Mary Bartels Bray
