Lesson 1: Assisted Living

I was greeted in the emergency room by a woman called the Patient Advocate. Minutes later, she was holding my hand when the doctor told me my husband was dead. My recollection of the next several hours is hazy, but one thing she said has come back to me a hundred times.

“People are going to want to help you,” she said. “Let them.”

Here I was, four decades into a stubbornly independent life. I suddenly needed help in a way I never knew was possible.

I called my sister-in-law from the hospital to tell her what happened, and she asked if I wanted her to come. “Yes,” I said without hesitation. “Please come.”

Normally, I would have told her to get some sleep and come the next day. She lives 90 miles away and it was already evening. I would have thought about traffic and darkness and whether she had eaten dinner yet. I would have told her not to worry about me, I would be fine. Instead, I asked her to come.

The next day, I opened the door to find a neighbor with tears streaming down her face. She was holding a plate of chocolate cake. “I don’t know what to say, so I made this. It’s still warm.” She came inside and sat with me for hours and I let her. We ate cake and cried and laughed, and I never told her to go home even though I knew this was messing up her family’s busy schedule.

In the last two months, I have become the ultimate “YES” woman. I have come to think of our home as a kind of assisted living facility, where no offer of help goes unaccepted. The boundless generosity of spirit in my family and friends is truly amazing, and I appreciate every single act of compassion - no matter how small or grand.

“People are going to want to help you,” she said. “Let them.”