I took a part time job working as a TV Repairman when I was still an Electrical Engineering  student in college.   I worked for one of the older and more established “TV shops” in town, and did out-call service and repair in people’s homes.

There were many “life lessons” I learned on that  job.    One is that there are some truly amazing and wonderful people… the “salt of the earth”…. at ALL places on the social/economic spectrum.  On the other hand, there are mean, nasty, self-serving people everywhere too.     There are slovenly folks sometimes living in that million-dollar “mansion on the hill”, which ought to be condemned as a public health hazard.  And just as surely, there are people for whom you wonder where their next meal is coming from who keep such a clean house that no stray speck of dust or piece of clutter could find a place to land.  I’ve been in the homes of people with basically nothing, who would gladly share their last morsel with you or the shirt off their backs if you needed it.   The opposite is just as likely to be true … people with an air of entitlement who would never consider being spontaneously kind or giving, because to them that’s not the way their world works.    I’ve tried to never forget that lesson… those contrasts.  I’ve tried to make it a point to try get to know “ordinary people” wherever I go, and to always give the new people I meet the benefit of the doubt.   Maybe its because I’ve lived my entire life in either the Midwest or the South, but my personal experience is that “good plain folks” are more often the rule than the exception.

I want to share a story from that TV repair job.   This is a true story,  but I’ve not shared this with very many people.  I’ve always felt it to be sort of a “private” memory.   I can’t say exactly why I’m doing so now, but somehow here in this place it seems like a good time to tell the story….

Not too long after I started doing those house-call repairs, I went on a call to a house not too far from campus in a nice neighborhood.    A smallish woman who was probably in her late seventies answered the door.  She had a very sweet smile, and invited me in.  She seemed to be living alone.   It was a fairly nice home, not large, but filled with antique furniture, and a good number of the sorts of interesting knick-knacks one accumulates in a long life. Not cluttered, but “full”.  There were a number of bookshelves spread around the living room, with LOTS of books.

She told me, “My TV just stopped working”.   I went over and tried to turn it on, and confirmed that she was correct.  So I pulled it away from the wall, and said… “Well ma’am, I think I found the problem” .. and showed her that the plug had come out of the outlet.  I plugged it back in and voila’, everything was fine.  She said, “Oh dear, I guess I must have knocked it out with the vacuum cleaner”, and then proceeded to express her embarrassment.

I said “Well ma’am, don’t worry about it.  Everything seems to be fine.  I’m not going to charge you for a service call, because I didn’t really have to fix anything. But while I’m here, let me go ahead and just adjust your color settings and make sure you’re getting a good picture.”    She said, “Well, thank you young man, but don’t call me ma’am, dear, call me Rose.  Everybody calls me Rose.”   She offered to pay me anyway.  When I refused, she insisted I have tea and some cookies with her.   It was really nothing special…. the cookies were store-bought and the tea was just a Lipton teabag.   But it was a sweet visit as we sat there in her living room and talked for a bit.

I learned that Rose wasn’t her real given name, but that family and friends had started calling her that years ago, because she had loved to keep a rose garden, and because she often showed her roses at the flower shows.  She said that she’d even been on TV, on a local show, talking about her roses once.  As she talked, her eyes revealed such life and vitality, and her smile was so very sweet.  She told me about growing up on a farm, and that her husband had died a few years before, and that he had been a professor at the University before he retired.  She told me that their only child, a daughter, and her family lived in Indiana so she was really all alone.  But I’m a bit ahead of the story here….

After I finished the tea and cookies, I said my goodbye because I had additional calls to make and went on my way.

When I got back to the shop I told the owner about the unplugged TV, and we chuckled a bit.  He was a good and honest man and really had no problems with my not charging her a service call.

A few weeks later, I showed up for work and saw on my service-call schedule that we gotten another call from Rose.  The note said that the picture on her TV was really messed up.   I went to her house as I was making my calls that day, and sure enough, the picture was as green as could be, contrast all out of whack, and way too bright.   I took a look at the knobs and realized they were all maladjusted and turned completely to one side.   It wasn’t uncommon in those days that people would sometimes try to adjust their own picture quality and get it all messed up.  I started in getting everything set back where it should be so that the picture was watchable.   By the time I’d gotten everything just right, only a few minutes, the tea kettle was whistling and she had a little smile on her face.   We had tea and cookies again, another little visit.  This time just a bit longer than the first.  When she absolutely insisted on paying for the service call, I let her.  I just chalked it all up to her “guilt” about getting the freebie the first time.

Then, a few weeks later, another service call at Rose’s house.   This time, the TV was unplugged again.  And she had that same wry smile.   So I confronted her, but with a smile.  “Rose, did you unplug your TV on purpose so we could have another little visit??”    She was quiet, and looked a bit sheepish, so without her having to say the words, I knew that was exactly what had happened.   Then I had an idea.   “Rose, how about I make you a deal… you stop calling me to come out about your unplugged TV, and I’ll come by and visit you from time to time?  It will be cheaper for you, and I’ll get more work done!”    We both laughed, and she said she would love that.

And so started one of the most remarkable friendships of my life.

For the next couple of years, I looked for opportunities to make good on my promise.   At first, I’d make it a point to stop by every week or so.  Occasionally a couple times a week, sometimes more like every other week.   It wasn’t hard to remember; her house was on the route I often took from my apartment to campus for classes.

We became good friends, and I really loved those visits.  Over time, I grew to truly love her, kind of as a surrogate for the grandma I never really had.    My dad’s mom died when he was just a young boy, so I never knew her at all.  My mom’s mom suffered early dementia and was in a nursing home by the time I was in 4th or 5th grade.  I do have some gauzy memories of visiting her as a small child, and of her baking lemon meringue pies.   But I never really knew much about her life, and I don’t recall ever hearing her tell any of her stories.

One of the most amazing things about Rose was that she had story upon story, and seemed to LOVE to tell them.  Mostly just talking about very ordinary things, but she was so full of life, and her eyes would just absolutely sparkle as she’d talk.  Her body was somewhat frail, and when she walked it seemed she was concentrating on taking very deliberate steps.   But her spirit was big as all outdoors. And when she laughed, she seemed more alive than anyone I’d ever known.  That laugh was so joyful and so precious, and seemed to fill up the room.  She hadn’t traveled much, just a time or two with her husband, but she shared his love of history and literature. We’d have tea in the winter, lemonade in the summer, and always some kind of cookies or cake.  Sometimes if the weather cooperated, we would sit on her back patio where she still had some roses growing, though she’d long since given up showing them at flower shows.

Often when she’d toddle off for the kitchen to get the tray with the refreshments, I’d stand there and browse the bookshelf.  Even back then I was a book-a-holic, and was  I was amazed at the variety of books she and her late husband had collected.  A few times when she came back in and found me there, she’d say something about how important it was to lead a “well rounded” life.  Even though she knew I was an engineering student, she liked very much that I enjoyed reading a wide variety of books, and liked it that I had many interests outside of “all that math”.  When we’d sit to talk, she wanted to know all about my family and loved hearing me talk about growing up in my small hometown of Mexico, Missouri.  Sometimes when I’d tell a story, it would remind her of something from her own life, and she’d start telling me of having been a little girl growing up in rural Missouri, or something of the life she shared with her husband.

It was so obvious when hearing her speak of him, that they had been very much in love with one another.  She said that sometimes when she was out tending her roses, he’d come out to keep her company and hand her the garden tools and tell her about his day.   And sometimes when he was reading a book in the evenings, she’d read the same book during the day so that they could discuss it together later.

She laughed and told me that they did the dishes together after supper almost every single night of their marriage…. she’d wash; he’d dry them and put them away.  She told me that when they were much younger they loved to go to one of the downtown hotels where there was a big band playing and they had dancing on Friday nights.  She told me they were actually quite good, and I had no trouble envisioning them dressed “to the nines” and gliding across the dance floor to some sentimental song.  In his later years, they’d often go for a walk, hand-in-hand around a couple of blocks on most nice summer evenings.  Rose told me of how on those walks on nights when the moon was full and the stars were out, she couldn’t imagine being happier than she was right in that moment.

Being happy in the moment was important to Rose.  I remember her telling me on several occasions, with a sort of “here’s some grandmotherly advice” air about her,  that I should take some time every day smile and be thankful for the fact that I had my whole life stretching out in front of me, and to make the most of what I’d been given.  It got so that most of our visits would end with Rose giving me some little variation on this bit of advice.

On a few occasions when I’d go by Rose’s house and ring the bell, there wouldn’t be an answer.  I’d go on about my business, and not really worry too much about it.  She might be napping or somewhere where she couldn’t hear me.   However, whenever this happened a couple times in a row, I did start to wonder.  Usually though, the next time I’d visit, there she would be, smiling and ready to invite me in for a chat.

There was one such instance where she hadn’t answered the door for the last couple times I’d dropped by.   On my next visit, I went up on her porch, rang the bell.   I was standing there as usual wondering what I’d do if she didn’t answer this day, the third time in a row.  Then the door did open.  But instead of Rose answering the door, it was her daughter Marilyn.  I’d never met her, but I recognized her instantly from the pictures Rose had on display around the living room.  I asked “Is Rose here?”, and suddenly realized how strange that must have sounded.  “May I ask what this is in reference to?”, she asked.     I explained that I was a friend, who dropped in to visit occasionally.

From Marilyn’s demeanor, I knew what was coming before I even heard the words.

“I’m sorry to say that my mom passed away suddenly late last week.  The funeral was Monday.”    I was literally speechless …I just did not have any words available in that moment.

I can’t imagine what the look in my eyes must have told this woman…. but whatever she saw in me, without another word she opened the screen door and invited me in.    I could see from the boxes scattered around the room that she’d been packing things up, sorting through the accumulated “stuff” of a long life.

“How did you come to know my mother?”  she asked.    I began to tell her how we’d met (and she of course laughed at the story of the “TV problems”, and said she could imagine her mom doing JUST that), and how we had become good friends through our little visits.  And as I told the story, I began to cry.   I mean really, really cry.  She was crying too, and she silently came over and sat beside me on the couch and hugged me.

It seems that my friendship with Rose had been “our little secret.”  Her daughter had absolutely no clue that I’d been her mom’s companion for an hour or so every week or two for a couple of years.

She was so grateful.  She told me that her mom hadn’t had too much of a “social circle”, and other than a few folks who’d known her father from the University, and a couple of people she herself had known growing up, the memorial service had been pretty small.  The thanked me over and again for my care for her mother.

I told her no, it was I who was grateful.   Grateful for this dear sweet lady, who out of loneliness I guess, had reached out in the only way she could think of, had taken a chance… possibly even what was for her a very bold chance….. and happened to find a friend.  Grateful for this beautiful soul who was so full of life and vitality and love and wisdom.  This amazingly gracious and giving woman who had worked for the last two years or more to make sure that I knew what it meant to lead a full life too, and to never take it for granted.

Marilyn graciously suggested that maybe I would like something of her mom’s that I could take to remember her by?  I asked if maybe I could take a book.  I didn’t really have any particular one in mind, but somehow it seemed like something Rose would have liked.   She gestured to the bookshelf she had been in the process of unloading and invited me to look. She laughed and said I could probably take several if I wanted. I don’t really know why, but my eye went right to one particular book, a book of poetry.  I picked it up, and without knowing why, somehow I just felt it was the right book.   I flipped through it, and asked if I might take this one.   She took it from me, and thumbed through it for a moment, decided it held no special sentimental value for her, and then smiled and said, “Sure.. . I’m sure mom would have loved for you to have it. ”

It’s the only thing of Rose’s I took.  I did not know it when I selected it off of that shelf, but the following poem by Charlotte Bronte  is included in the book.     I think Rose would be so very pleased that it still means so much to me.

Life
by Charlotte Bronte

LIFE, believe, is not a dream
So dark as sages say;
Oft a little morning rain
Foretells a pleasant day.
Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,
But these are transient all;
If the shower will make the roses bloom,
O why lament its fall ?

Rapidly, merrily,
Life’s sunny hours flit by,
Gratefully, cheerily,
Enjoy them as they fly !

What though Death at times steps in
And calls our Best away ?
What though sorrow seems to win,
O’er hope, a heavy sway ?
Yet hope again elastic springs,
Unconquered, though she fell;
Still buoyant are her golden wings,
Still strong to bear us well.
Manfully, fearlessly,
The day of trial bear,
For gloriously, victoriously,
Can courage quell despair !

Sometimes when I leave the house in the morning my wife reminds me to be sure and look for the evidence of God’s love in my life.   Some days I don’t find it.   Not because God is too small, but because I am.  And often, I simply forget to look.  Or maybe I get stubborn and refuse to even try.

Some days though, it’s rather easy.  I’d like to think it was easy for Rose almost every day.

I think of Rose every time I strike up a conversation with a stranger, especially if it is an older person.   And I think of possibilities inherent in each new meeting.  I think of how every chance encounter holds the opportunity to learn … and to make not just a casual acquaintance, but possibly a lifelong friend.

And I think about years.

As I look back on those visits with my sweet friend, sharing the laughter and memories …. memories from more than a lifetime’s worth of years away… I realize that what we shared is still an an amazing gift.   And the love that I *should* be looking for is abundant and clear.

We are so lucky to have friendships that resonate true.  When you’re lucky enough to have friends who have been a part of your life for decades, as I do and many of you do,  cherish them.  Cherish them.

I believe that love shared makes the world a better place.    So thank you all for the love you share with each other and with me.

And thank you, Rose.

love,
John