Her plight could be mine or yours

Maybe it was the way she was ever so slightly dragging her left leg. Perhaps it was the confused look in her eyes, like she had just walked into a room filled with strangers. It could have been the way she doubled her shopping cart as a walker as she exited the grocery store, ambling towards her car.

For whatever reason, something about the dear lady prompted me to ask, “Can I help you get your groceries to your car?”

She couldn’t hear me very well, so I repeated myself.

“Well, my leg is hurting,” she reluctantly admitted.

I noticed the lone tooth remaining in her lower gums.

And so we began the slow trek across the grocery store parking lot, with my wife, Lori, gently holding our new friend’s left shoulder, while I flanked them on the right.

I neatly placed her groceries in her front car seat. She nodded her approval after I explained, “So you won’t have to reach down to get them from the floorboard.”

“Maybe you should start her car for her,” Lori suggested, after she observed our friend struggling to find her car keys.

A couple of minutes later, Lori was telling me to stop trying: “I think you might flood it.”

“Has this ever happened before?” I asked loud enough for her to hear, half-hoping someone who knew more about cars than I did would hear me, too.

“Yes,” she answered, “the last time I drove it.”

“Great,” I thought, and asked, “Do you know anyone who could help you get home?”

“No, my husband passed four years ago, and I live alone.”

I looked at Lori with a grimace, raising my eyebrows as if to say, “What to do now?”

As I tried again to start her car, a young man came by and offered to give the lady a ride home. She declined his offer.

“My dad knows her, but she doesn’t know me. I guess that’s why she won’t let me give her a ride home,” the young man confided in us.

A legitimate fear aging people who live alone have is that there will be no one to care for them, at least no one they can trust.

And as baby boomers age, that question will become more acute.

That’s because shifting demographics forecast that boomers will have fewer friends and family members to care for them. You may be taking care of your parents, only to find that when you reach their age, you won’t have anyone to care for you like you did them, according to a study by AARP, as reported by the LA Times.

Research predicts there will be a dramatic decline in the caregiver support ratio as boomers age.

Lynn Feinberg, one of the authors of the AARP study, noted: “More than two-thirds of Americans believe they will be able to rely on their families to meet their needs when they need long-term care, but this confidence is likely to deflate when it collides with the dramatically shrinking availability of family caregivers in the future.”

Although our new friend isn’t a baby boomer, her circumstances served as an omen of what could be for many of us.

“Can we give you a ride home?” we asked.

Shaking her head, “no,” she handed me a card for an automobile repair service, one with which I happened to be familiar.

“They are good people, I’ll call them for you. They’ll take care of your car and get you home if you need that,” I hollered to her as she turned her head so to hear me better.

And so they arrived and helped her.

I called her the next day.

“I’m so glad they started my car and didn’t have to take it in,” she said.

“Until next time,” I thought.

“I meant to ask you, do you have any children in the area who can help you?”

“Yes, there are children out here, and some people are about to have more babies.”

“No, I mean, do YOU have any children?” I said as loudly and as clearly as I could.

“Oh, no, I have no children. I live alone.”

It’s the plight of more and more people who have neither the financial resources to avail themselves of retirement centers or the family and friends to care for them as they age.

I hung up the phone with an ominous thought: “I could be one of them some day.”

And given the wrong circumstances at the right time, so could you.

Can being too clean be bad?

“Let’s see what’s going on here,” the doctor said as she looked at my charts.

I felt miserable but didn’t want to admit it, as if refusing to acknowledge sickness would somehow make it go away.

It didn’t.

My wife had repeatedly urged me to “just do it; go to the doctor,” but I had chosen to ignore her admonitions.

It was my daughter, the nurse, Madi, who finally convinced me. “You might have the flu,” she warned. “All your cleanliness might just be bad,” she added, with a raised eyebrow.

That planted a doubt in my mind, and my thermometer did register a fever, so I succumbed.

And there I sat, anticipating that the doctor would tell me it was really nothing and so glad you came in, thank you, bye.

But that wasn’t what she said.

“Let’s see here, looks like you’ve got the flu… and oh yes, strep throat too.”

I was given a mask to wear out of the clinic, just to make sure I kept my illness to myself.

It was like the prison warden being cast among the inmates, for I had relentlessly strived to keep my distance from people like… me.

“Of all people…” I thought as I waited for my meds to be filled.

I’m the one who is careful to keep a hand wipe or bottle of hand sanitizer close by. And though I make numerous pastoral visits to the hospitals, I’ve had the flu shot, and I make sure I sanitize my hands after each and every visit. I seemed an unlikely candidate for illness.

Just a few days previous to my little bout with infection, I had been wiping down the phone, cabinets, microwave, and anything anyone might have touched in our house. “I worry about my husband,” Lori slipped into a soliloquy as she watched me scurrying through my hygienic habits. “I fear he is turning into Howard Hughes.”

I wasn’t amused; this was serious business. “Well, I haven’t had so much as a snivel, and you’ve already had two colds this year,” I bragged in rebuttal.

You won’t find me pushing a grocery cart unless I have wiped down the handle with a sanitizer. Who knows what kid in a dirty diaper has scooted across that handle? And the truth is, I’m not fond of shaking hands either, for after all, though they might be the hands of some of the nicest people on God’s good earth, how do I know where those hands have been?

I even make sure I double wash the eating utensils at the church meals. How do I know someone didn’t cough some virus on that fork before I picked it up?

And don’t touch my cell phone, please. That will require a sanitation ceremony. The same holds true for my laptop, thank you. And if I touch your cell phone, and then touch mine, well, some germs from your cell phone might have hopped from your phone to my hand and then to my cell phone. You guessed got it: another sanitation ceremony is required.

Please take no offense, it’s not you, AS A PERSON. It’s just that I trust the hygienic history of no one’s hands but my own and a very select group of cleanliness aficionados like myself.

But now, since I am officially one of the infected, I fear I no longer qualify for the cleanliness club: I’ve become, “one of them.”

Walking out of the clinic with the mask, I lowered my head in shame.  All my work as a bona fide germaphobe seemed pointless.

So, should I (and you) give up the quest for cleanliness?

The research seems to say, “yes and no.”

Madi was actually right: being too clean can be bad.

Something called the “hygiene hypothesis,” suggests that a lack of childhood exposure to harmful germs and fewer childhood infections are to blame for the relatively recent rise in allergies. Moreover, while it is important to maintain good personal and home hygiene, exposure to “good and bad germs,” which are present in our everyday environment, helps our bodies learn how to fight infection and tell the difference between harmful and harmless bacteria.

So, I’ve determined to loosen up a bit on my intentions to eradicate all possible germs in my home and work environments.

You may not catch me wrapping my arms around the shopping cart handle, but go ahead, touch my cell phone, and provided I at least know who you are, I hereby vow not to sanitize it.

Just don’t listen too carefully.

You might hear me whispering a prayer for hygienic protection.