THE OLD FISHERMAN
Our house was directly across the street from the clinic
entrance of Johns
Hopkins Hospital Baltimore
One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a
knock at the door. I opened it to see a
truly awful looking old 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 till morning.”
He told me he’d been hunting for a room since noon but with no success. “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 and I talked with him a few minutes.
It didn’t take long to see that this old man had an oversized heart
crowded into that tiny body.
He told me that 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; every other sentence was prefaced with a thanks to God for a
blessing. He was grateful that no pain
accompanied hid disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer. He thanked God for giving him 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 to have a treatment? I won’t put you out a bit - I can sleep fine
in a chair.”
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 they would be nice and fresh.
I knew his bus left at four a.m.
and wondered what time he had to get up in order to do this.
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 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.”
And maybe we did, once or twice, but oh, if only they could
have known him perhaps their illnesses 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 basket. 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 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 fisherman. “He won’t mind starting in this small body.”
But that’s behind now, long ago, and in God’s garden how
tall this lovely soul must stand.
I searched on Google, but could not find the source. WDM
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