— From Chicken Soup for the Soul, 1999

One Saturday

Springtime in New York City — my first apartment, a good-paying new job and a great looking new girlfriend — it couldn't get much better than that. In fact, I felt so good, so magnanimous, I decided to share my happiness with others. Helping someone less fortunate seemed the noble thing to do. Following a friend's example, I volunteered with The Lighthouse for the Blind.

A friendly volunteer coordinator explained they needed help with an outreach program for elderly, recently-blinded shut-ins.

The night before my first meeting with "the shut-in", my girlfriend and I had a major fight. She left; I sulked.

Next morning, a Saturday, found me dragging myself to meet this shut-in person, but my generous mood had evaporated. In fact, I'd spent most of the night reliving the fight instead of sleeping. Cranky and saturated with self-pity, a root canal seemed preferable to visiting some old blind man.

Charlie lived in a rough section of Manhattan — the Lower East side — very low, very east. Dodging delirious winos, occasionally crossing the street to avoid desperate-looking drug addicts, I trudged toward our first meeting.

I tried to imagine what Charlie looked like. The coordinator said he was very old. At twenty-three, I considered anyone sixty-five to be a candidate for The Dirt Nap. Charlie, I'd been told, was older than that.

"Great," I muttered on my wino-strewn walk, "he's probably senile too." Resigned to a lost Saturday morning, I promised myself I'd call the Lighthouse first thing Monday morning. By then I'd think of a good excuse to free myself and my Saturdays.

Climbing crumbling steps to his run-down building, I began the ascent to his 6th floor apartment. After banging on Charlie's graffiti-covered metal door, I heard shuffling sounds. A face appeared in the narrow chained gap. I gasped. This guy's older than God, I said to myself. Cataract-clouded eyes, wispy white hair, he was ancient.

Charlie ushered me into his surprisingly tidy apartment. It looked better than mine did and I could see.

Charlie wasn't sixty-five, he was sixty-five years older than I was -- eighty-eight. Sitting on his musty sofa reminded me of my grandparents. My favorite, my mother's father, had died more than a dozen years before. He'd told me stories, took me to the circus, and never lectured me. But cancer had taken him before I hit high school. Sitting in Charlie's apartment reminded me how much I missed him.

Small talk, the lubrication of first encounters, soon became biography. Charlie told me how he'd lost his vision and wife of more than fifty years in the previous ten months. But he said that without a trace of self-pity.

As I tried to imagine what he must feel like, Charlie explained how fortunate he'd been to have such a wonderful marriage for so long. And then, as if sensing my uneasiness, he smiled sweetly.

That first day we visited his barber and walked more than he had since his wife's funeral. Charlie'd outlived everybody. Friends and relatives were all gone, with the exception of one remaining son in California.

As we walked, we talked. Charlie spun tales of his youth, working on ships, foreign ports he'd visited, his abiding love for the sea -- especially at daybreak when it seemed as if ship and ocean were all his own, before the rising sun scorched the pewter seas.

He described life in New York City during World War I, trolley cars and flappers. And, of course, he told me about life with the woman he'd loved for more than a half-century.

Time slipped by. My agreed-upon one hour visit stretched to three. He was a wonderful storyteller, but more than that, no matter what life event he shared, no matter how sad I thought it sounded, he didn't complain. He looked at life in a way that never occurred to me. He was wise in a way that only some of those who think deeply about their experiences become wise.

By the time I left him that afternoon — eventually he needed his nap — my self-pity had vanished. Actually, by that time whining about any of my troubles seemed petty. Visits with Charlie became the high point of my week. His stories always put things in perspective — without ever giving me advice directly.

Life's full of surprises, Charlie often told me. And I knew that to be true, as never before, on that Saturday morning many years ago.

Mr. Asenjo is a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Iowa's Rehabilitation Counselor Education program with a minor in Aging Studies. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

© 2009 Bill Asenjo

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