More Than a Cleaning Lady

We met many wonderfully caring and compassionate doctors, nurses and aides while my mom was in hospice. But one of the people I remember most never had any direct contact with Mother, and yet touched our lives immensely. One morning, my sisters, Jo and Char, my sister-in-law, Rhonda, and I were standing outside my mom's room in the hospice wing of the hospital. It had been a very emotional morning and we were in tears. Down the hall came a cleaning woman, pushing her cart. As she approached us, she stopped the cart and walked up to us. She said we looked like we could use a hug and asked if she could give us one. We had never seen this woman before and yet we all welcomed her hug. She talked to us for a few minutes, although I don't remember the conversation at all.

A day or so later, it was just me and Mother in the room when this same cleaning woman came to tidy up the room. When she saw the cot that my sisters and I had been taking turns sleeping on, she asked me if it was as uncomfortable as it looked. I told her that yes it was, but with as nice as everyone had been to us, I wasn't going to complain about the comfort of the cot.  A few minutes after she left from tidying the room, I saw her outside the room, motioning for me to come out into the hall. There she stood with a nice chair that folded out into a comfortable cot. She asked if she could give us that chair and take the uncomfortable cot out of the room. I was so touched by her kindness. A few hours later, she poked her head into the room and asked if there was anything else she could do for us. We said no, but as she walked away, I quickly went into the hall and told her there was one thing I needed from her.....her name. She said it was Anita.

It is now a year later and I still think about Anita. While I remember the names of some of our favorite hospice nurses (Colleen, Cheryl and Carrie), many of the others names now escape me. But that dear cleaning lady, Anita, I will never forget. She was truly an angel. I doubt that "hugging patient's family" or "noticing and replacing uncomfortable cots" are in her job description. To her they may have seemed like little things, but to us, they were anything but little. Anita looked beyond her job and touched our hearts.

Lord, please help me to be an Anita to others.