Michael

I've been volunteering at The Mustard Seed for almost two years now, and occasionally someone in the community passes away, and their picture is put up on the bulletin board. I always look to see if I recognize them, but so far the pictures have been unfamiliar. However, I often have thought of the many older people that we see each week, and I knew it was only a matter of time before one of them left us.

On Tuesday, Stewart came in and told me that "British Michael" (as Stewart calls him) had died that morning.

Michael was a small man, hard of hearing, rarely smiled, and usually came in late for dinner. I always favored him because of his accent (my grandfather is also British), and because he looked so fragile. In the past few months, he could barely get up the stairs at the entrance to the building, and he would have to stop at each step. However, he would never take help, and he always served himself.

One of my best memories was when I first started and we had hundreds of little chocolate wafers to give away. I knew he loved them with his tea, so I gave him lots, and then I found him as he was leaving and gave him two entire packages. A few weeks ago, we had a great chat - for some reason he came right up to me as I was cleaning out the coffee machine and talked about the weather and his health, that he had pneumonia but was getting better.

The last time I saw him was a couple of Tuesdays ago, when his friend was trying to sneak food out for him, but eventually he came in since no one would let his friend outside with the food. It was the first time I saw him let someone help him, and I didn't know at the time that would be the last time I would see him.

I'm going to miss Michael, how he sat and read the paper while drinking his tea, how he asked for sweetener instead of sugar, and his refined British accent.

It made me realize that any of the community could be gone next; for many of them, a simple cold could be the difference between life and death.

I'll just step up my game a little bit - I want to make sure they all know that I care.