"I'm all alone now," a lady told me today at White River Care Center where I had gone to visit as I've tried to do every Tuesday until my friend Beaver passed away two weeks ago.
"I lost my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunts, my brother, my sisters. I'm the only one left."
She's one of the reasons I went back to visit even though Beaver is no longer there. Others are there--most of whom feel very alone. They don't have a family to be with like I do.
I put together five vases of flowers from our flower gardens to give to residents there.
They don't get to enjoy all the children going camping together as we did a month ago. At the care center, no one had signed the guest registry between our family coming in Sunday and my going today. No one--for the dozens of residents.
It's a tough feeling--being the only "elder" left in the family, as they call them on the reservation. The same lady has seven living children, with three having gone on before her, she said. And there I was, a lady who was trying to come in and be a friend--just so she wouldn't have to walk this path alone.
Yet there are times when even those of us in families feel alone.
An acquaintance in Pennsylvania is walking a very lonely cancer journey right now--the whole family suffering along with her.
There are also times, on the other hand, that we wish to be alone actually, such as when I walk to the mailbox and wish that I could go alone, but no, the goats must follow me all the way to the highway and beyond, if I can't get far ahead fast enough!
"I am never alone!" I laughed to my girls one day, "for the goat is with me!"
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