Tuesday, December 04, 2007

The Gift of Presence

Today I spent the afternoon helping mrangelmeg's mom with her Christmas Cards. I took my laptop and printer to her house and we made swift work of addressing her Christmas Cards by printing all of her addresses on labels which I put on the envelopes along with return labels and stamps. All she has to do over the next few days is sign each card and place it in the envelope and put them out for the mailman.

She was so happy. She told me that last year her little list of names (I think it added up to about 24 all together) took her nearly until Christmas Eve because she could only do about five a day writing them all out longhand.

What is even better is I saved the list for next year so all we have to do is make any changes and we are good to go.

The best part of all was we got to spend a really nice afternoon together. I sure wish I could spend that much quality time with my own mother. She doesn't even know who I am anymore and when I do go to visit she can only stand to have me around for about 45 minutes to an hour before she wants me to leave.

So, if you know of an elderly person in your family (or neighborhood, or church) who might be in the same predicament as my mother-in-law, why not offer to help out in the way I did. It was so much fun.

Pax

2 comments:

Mimi said...

That's a wonderful idea!

owenswain said...

Amen.
I volunteer each Wednesday at the Downtown Mission. I just show up and wash dishes and pots and pans and...


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