Sweet Madeline

I don't even know where to start with this post. Brother and Sister Anderson were an older couple serving a mission in our branch. They had to go home suddenly because she came down with a bad case of the shingles. When I asked sister Anderson if there was anything I could do to help before she left she asked me if I could please check in on Madeline. Madeline is 91 years old and has been in a nursing home because she fell at home (where she lives alone) and needed help recovering. However, she couldn't afford to stay there and had to return home about a week ago (to the very small trailer where she lives). I called her today to ask her if I could go and pick up some groceries for her (she requested a lemon meruenge pie and Orange Juice) and see if she needed any help with anything. I picked up her groceries, made dinner for my family, then headed over to her house with some of the dinner I had made and her groceries. From the moment I walked in the door....I felt the small amount of service I had done was so insignificant. The tiny trailer was is horrible disrepair. When I walked on the floor I could feel that the floor boards under the carpet were rotting because the floor gave in a little with every step I took. The kitchen was full of dirty dishes all over all the counter tops, and when I went to put the food in the fridge, it was full of old food that obviously should have been thrown out months ago. The furniture she had was very old and broken and too big for the small trailer. After sitting with Madeline for a while I learned a little bit about her. She didn't marry until she was 50, and her husband died 16 years later. She never had any children and has no family. She was kind and had a smile on her face the whole time she told me her story and about the trees she loves in her yard and the home health nurse that she keeps thinking is going to come today, but never comes. I was figthing back tears the whole time I was there thinking how grateful I am to have parents, siblings, children, and a husband. And how horrible I felt that she didn't have that. I offered to do her dishes (trying not to embarras her about the state of her little house) and she refused and said she could them. I told her I didn't really have any friends and I was so glad that now I did I wanted to help her in any way I could, she still refused. Finally I convinced her to let me come back in the day light and vaccume. This poor woman should not be living alone, but can't afford to do otherwise, and I feel totally helpless. I just kept imagining if this had been my grandma, or mom, or sister and finding them living in these conditions. Nearly broke my heart. My experience tonight is not one that I will be forgetting anytime soon, it has opened my eyes to the needs of the elderly who so often get looked past and ignored and are trapped at home in their tiny trailers....waiting for the home health nurse to come so they can do something as simple as take a shower. Their entire existence depends on other people making the time to take out their garbage, do their grocery shopping, make them meals, do their dishes all the simple things they can't do for themselves anymore. I hope I can do something in Madeline's life to make it a little better.