So Long, Chester Wheeler(77)

She sat down behind her desk and I sat down in front of it.

“We don’t get a lot of young men your age in here to volunteer. I’m not suggesting it’s unheard of, but it’s . . . unusual. Tell me a little bit about what made you want to come in.”

“Okay. Sure. I just finished doing a job that involved taking care of a man who was dying. I didn’t have any training or professional credentials. He just needed somebody to be with him, to help him, and he’d driven everybody else away. I’d just gotten laid off from my job, and I needed the money, so I had to be that one person who wouldn’t let himself be driven away, and at first I didn’t think I could do it. I figured I’d be just as thin skinned as everybody else who’d walked away from him. But I ended up getting a lot out of the work. I ended up figuring out that I could let his behavior toward me roll off my back, and I didn’t need to take it personally. And that’s . . . it’s such a freedom. To mostly rise up above the idea of someone being able to pull your strings. It’s freeing. I don’t want to lose that. I want to keep that going. I don’t want to sound too corny, and maybe I’m saying too much, talking too much, but I feel like I want to say it was a gift.”

She was fiddling with a pen as I spoke.

“To you? Or to him?”

“Well, both, I guess. He needed someone to stay with him till the end, and I managed to do that. But I meant a gift to me, actually.”

“Do you mind if I ask what you were doing before? Workwise, I mean. You said you’d just lost a job.”

“I was a software developer.”

“This is a long way from that.”

“Yes, it is. I noticed that.”

“Did you hope to continue being a software developer?”

“Now that’s a good question. I guess I thought so. I guess I figured I was attached to that career, but now I look back and I think my only thoughts about career were tied in with money. I didn’t know a career could be more than money.”

“I see.”

She jotted briefly on a pad, then looked right into my face.

“Most of the people we care for will be much easier than your last experience. We can certainly find you someone who’s more of a pleasure to work with.”

“No, I don’t want that,” I said. “I want the toughest, most disagreeable people you’ve got.”

She shot me a glance that was, at very least, quizzical.

“Talk to me more about why you would want that.”

“Because . . . I’m beginning to think it’s my . . . would it be too dramatic to say it’s my calling?”

She didn’t offer an opinion on that, so I kept going.

“I mean, they say everybody has something they can bring into the world. What if this is my something? What if I end up being of some use to somebody else, and all because somehow I learned not to take it personally, and that puts me in a position to help? You know what I mean?”

“I think so,” she said.

“I’m about to take a course to be certified as a home health-care worker.” I was surprised to hear myself say it, because I hadn’t realized I’d already decided. I seemed to be telling Trudy and myself the news at the same time. “The daughter of the man I was caring for wants to pay my way through it, because she says some other families are bound to need what I just did for hers.”

“Because you don’t take it personally.”

She sounded like she was adding me up in her brain and still hadn’t come to any sort of sum total.

“Right. I’m starting to think . . . how do I put this so it makes sense? I look at the world now, and I think . . . if people knew how much they were revealing about themselves when they tell you what they think of you, everybody would just shut up and never say anything to anybody again.”

We sat in silence for a few beats. Then her expression changed. A tiny smile formed on her lips.

“Oh, if you make it through the training, you’re going to be a very welcome addition around here,” she said.

I felt myself relax, and I sat back in my chair. I breathed deeply.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You still need to take the thirty hours of training and commit to at least four hours of volunteer work a week when possible.”

“Understood. I’m between jobs, so the timing is good.”

“This is great. I love this.” Then, “Hey, Connie!” she called. Loudly enough to make me jump a little, though maybe only on the inside.

The woman from the front lobby appeared in the open doorway.

“Guess what? We found a new volunteer for Gladys.”

Connie’s face morphed into a frown.

“Are we sure we want to do that to him?”

“It’s what he wants.”

“Yeah, but . . . Gladys? Is he sure? How much does he know about her?”

“Difficult people are my calling,” I said.

“But . . .”

“No buts,” I said. “I just got done taking care of Chester Wheeler. There’s nobody you could possibly throw at me who would be too hard.”



By the end of the day, owing to some nearly superhuman feat of endurance, I had Chester’s house emptied out.

The furniture was all out in the driveway, along with more than forty garbage bags full of trash to be hauled to the dump. My car trunk and back seat were stacked to overflowing with odd items to donate to a thrift store.