An Evening with Coach


One morning recently I got a telephone call at work from an elderly neighbor. She spent many years working with the schools in the area. People sometimes call her “Coach” because she coached tennis for a long time. She has had bouts with cancer and has not been in good health since I met her several years ago. Recently she has become very feeble physically. I’ve also seen worrying signs that her other faculties are declining.

I have to confess that my reaction to the call was of the “oh no, not now” variety. When she calls she usually needs a favor of some kind. We were having a busy morning at work, preparing for a big batch of children and youth as part of our summer reading program. I already knew that I would be tired when I got off work that evening and in need of rest. It looked like I might have trouble getting it.

As soon as I thought all of this, though, I felt ashamed. This was an elderly neighbor who needed help and company. The kind of reaction I had was a very selfish and un-neighborly way to think. So I stomped hard on that thinking and listened.

Sure enough, “Coach” needed some help. Could I come that evening after work, around seven? I said I would. I sighed a bit when I hung up the phone. Then I resolved that I was going to treat the request as an opportunity to have a nice visit, not as an imposition.

That evening at seven sharp I stepped out of the house and made the brief walk to the corner where “Coach” lives. She was in the back yard, working on something or other, or trying to at least. At best she did not look any better than the last time I had seen her a few weeks earlier. A substantial hospital visit had passed in the meantime.

She led me into her house and settled down in a chair, looking very tired and weak. Despite her illnesses, she has so far managed to keep the house looking nice. The living room was as neat as could be, with its prints of deer and rural scenes on the walls, the pictures of family and mementoes on the mantle and shelves, and other bric-a-brac of the sort that accumulates over many years. She and her husband had built the house in 1960. It had been home for most of her life. It was her pride and joy.

She began to talk about her latest health problems. She had a new tumor, near her brain stem, and surely I knew how serious that was. The doctor had let her come home on the condition that she take some medicine twice a day that made it hard for her to get anything done. She had keeled over and fallen and hurt her knees at a local store just the other day, and had had to sign a release to get them to agree not to take her to the emergency room. And she did not want to go to that hospital if she could avoid it!

All sorts of things had gone wrong at the house. The garbage disposal had acted up. Some of the outside lights weren’t working. The lawn mower was having problems.

Various people had come to help with the problems and mow her lawn for her. Each time she mentioned someone she would get off on a tangent about this person. She jumped around so much in her talk that it was almost impossible to follow. It was not so much a conversation as her thinking aloud in almost a stream-of-consciousness. I just sat there with my hands folded in my lap, listening attentively and responding politely when the opportunity presented itself. Inwardly I was worried that she sounded rather disorganized in her thinking. It was much the way it had been on my last visit.

For all that, she was interesting to listen to. She had a lot to say about different people, about the way the school system was going now, and about her health. She did seem to realize now and then that she was rambling a bit; once in a while she would say “Well, I’m not going to talk about that any more” and move on to a new subject. She had some distinctive turns of phrase. Her deceased husband and others she described as having been “promoted to God.” A somewhat wayward twenty-one-year-old grandson had been “going over Fool’s Hill” lately. She hoped he was about done with that.

After she had rested a bit she rose and led me into the kitchen and asked if I wanted something to eat. I was not particularly hungry, and indeed had had a bit of a stomach ache since early afternoon. But she always offers me something whenever I come over, and I figure it makes her feel better to be able to give it to me. So I accepted a small bowl of fruit salad and a little caramel oatmeal treat and a glass of water. The men who had come to her house to work that afternoon had loved the caramel oatmeal, she said. It did taste good.

Then we went out into the back yard. It is a lovely place, with planters, yard furniture, a little log shed brought there years ago from a place in the country, and a wooden deck and gazebo. On the deck hung a pleasant primitive painting of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, carrying a lost sheep through a mountain landscape. She had painted that herself, with some help from a local art teacher I knew.

It was a nice yard, and she was very proud of it, but she had more and more trouble keeping it up. The clearest sign of this was the back fence. It was decaying and weathered. The strings of Christmas lights she had hung there no longer worked in places. One of the things she wanted me to do was to help her with the lights. I tried, but had limited success. My biggest accomplishment was adjusting a floodlight so that it shined properly on the big American flag that occupied one end of the fence.

In another section were dozens of names. These were in honor of—or often in memory of—fellow cancer patients Coach had known. Besides having it herself, she had lost many friends and family to it, her husband among them. Until recently she had held annual cancer awareness events in her back yard. Along with the schools, cancer had been her cause.

We decided to call it an evening as the sun’s late rays reddened in the western sky. She suggested that we join hands in prayer for a bit and then thanked me for coming. By way of further thanks she sent me home with a Styrofoam to-go box with a bit of pork tenderloin, a bit of a vegetable dish she had prepared, a couple of those caramel oatmeal bars, and a piece of friendship cake. I had the delicious tenderloin and the vegetables with rice for my late supper. The sweet stuff I saved for another evening.

I did not really accomplish very much in trying to help with her handyman needs. Mostly I just listened and visited. I suspected from the start that the company was what she needed most. Fortunately Coach has some other friends and family whom she sees regularly, so she is not alone in the world. But it must get lonely in that house, from which husband and children have long gone. She has more and more trouble leaving it. Paradoxically, she may have to give it up entirely before much longer for some sort of assisted living arrangement.

I think she would just as soon be “promoted.” Perhaps she will be before too much longer. Until then, it’s a privilege to have the chance to visit her.

D.L. You are a good neighbor and friend. I think even being a good listener helped Coach a lot. She is an interesting person and somebody I think I'd like if I met her in person. Thanks for sharing this. God bless.

She left a bit of friendship cake on the seat of my car at my house a couple of days ago (along with a book to be returned to the library). That was very nice. I'm not much use to her right now since my leg is still bothering me.

You're more use than any of us can imagine, I think. Sometimes, while we think of how big a chore it is to just go visit, it's good that we have duty and friendship instilled so that we go ahead and do it.

I hope your leg get's better soon, DL. I read your story about how you heard it on your bike. Hopefully it doesn't bother you too much.


P.S. Please post more stories. I really like reading them.