charity

Who Needs What I Have?

Posted on by Phil Corbett

If you Google “four questions in life” like I did, the first page of your search results will most likely consist of some information about Don Juan DeMarco, Johnny Depp, a couple of doctors, and a few other more existential offerings.

When I think of the four questions in life, I think of Fr. Don Piche.

About 10 years or so ago, some friends and I were guest musicians at Fr. Don’s church. In addition to getting the opportunity to play music with some very talented people, I got to hear his sermon twice, which was a good thing, because it was excellent. The sermon centered on four questions motivating us at different stages in our lives. I do not remember if he came up with the questions himself or if he was borrowing material from someone else. I don’t even know if I remember exactly what he said anymore. I just know he spoke about the four questions and some variation of those questions has stuck with me since. Here is my variation.

During our younger years, others (usually parents) are responsible for providing for our needs and what is left to influence us is answering the question “Do I have what I want?” As we get older and begin to separate from our parents or caregivers, we take on more responsibilities for our lives and the question most pressing is usually “Do I have what I need?” As we get more settled into our adult lives, accumulating more things and filling up the storage spaces in our houses and garages, we may stare at our “stuff” and ask ourselves “Do I need what I have?” At this point, it is important to ask ourselves the final question – “Who needs what I have?”

Unfortunately, we know not everyone gets beyond the second question. Do I have what I need, or more likely, do we have what we need, is a question many families ask for prolonged periods of time. As someone who grew up feeling like a child on Christmas morning each time a box of hand-me-downs arrived from my cousins, I enjoy going through our family’s stuff and taking a load of it to Catholic Charities or Goodwill. I love the idea of getting rid of clutter. More importantly, I enjoy knowing someone else will be able to use what I have more than I do.

Who needs what I have, though, should pertain to all stages of life. Whether we are five or fifty-five, there is usually something we have that could benefit someone else. It may not always be our stuff, though. Sometimes, just a little bit of our time and effort is all others need from us.

An unexpected result of my post, Making a Difference, was getting emails from my cousins with other stories of the things my grandma did. One story that struck me illustrates this time and effort thought well.

One day a neighbor boy went up to his room with a shotgun and took his own life. While the mother was making funeral arrangements, Grandma gathered some neighbors, some pails, soap, rags and clean sheets to go clean up the mess. When some folks hesitated, Grandma said “there is no way that mom is going to face any more heartache coming home to that terrible scene. She’s going to find that bedroom exactly as it was before he died”. And that’s just what Grandma and others did. Wow!

Yes, often a little bit of our time and effort is what is most needed.

Making A Difference

Posted on by Phil Corbett

Some people strive to change the world. Most of us hope to just have a positive impact on the world around us. That is okay. Enough people making seemingly small differences in their worlds can affect the larger world. To me, that is what Paying It Forward and committing Random Acts of Kindness are all about – doing little things to effect a bigger change.

Of course, long before those phrases became popular, people were making a difference. Irene is one of those people. Though she died 20 years ago, at the age of 89, her unconditional love for people, her steadfast belief in the goodness of people, and her willingness to reach out to people in need is an inspiration still today.

Irene and her husband, Harold, raised four biological children and were official foster parents to an additional 51 children, including one who stayed for over 12 years. He is actually considered one of Irene and Harold’s five children and a brother by the four biological children. In addition to the 51 official foster children, they took in dozens of other children whose families were struggling somehow. Some stayed for a few days and some for a few weeks. All stayed for free.

Irene found one such child in a post office. After striking up a conversation with a young mother, Irene found out the mother needed to have an operation and had no place for her baby to stay. Irene offered to take care of the baby and the mother accepted. Irene had no assurance that the mother would come back for the baby but she just trusted that the mother would. Several weeks later, the mother did.

During the Depression of the 1930s, Irene often provided meals at her home for hungry and homeless wanderers. Once she hired an armless man to do some yard work for her and then decided he needed a bath and some clean clothes, especially socks. One of her children found her on the floor trimming the man’s toenails so they wouldn’t cut holes in the new socks she gave him.

While having coffee at a local bakery, Irene overheard an employee asking a man who was loitering to leave. The man said he was waiting for his granddaughter to pick him up. The employee told the man if he was not gone in a half an hour, he would call the police. After finishing her coffee, Irene told the employee to call her, not the police, if the man’s granddaughter did not show up. Of course, soon after she got home, Irene got the call. She had someone go get him and bring him to her home. She fed him, got him cleaned up and gave him some of her husband’s clothes.

Irene knew of an elderly bachelor in her neighborhood who had lived a lonely life, with few relatives or friends, if any. She took it upon herself to go to his apartment daily to take care of him. On the man’s last birthday before he died, she baked a cake, grabbed some of her grandchildren and threw him a party. He wept.

Even when her husband was in the hospital, Irene did not stop reaching out to others. If other patients’ relatives did not have a place to stay, many ended up eating and staying at Irene’s.

When Irene died in 1992, her obituary in the Star Tribune, Minnesota’s leading newspaper, was four inches high and five columns wide. Irene did not die wealthy but she died rich – rich from a lifetime of touching the lives and hearts of others and making a difference. She was “paying it forward” and committing “random acts of kindness” before either were even thought of.

Now I admit, with the way things are today, it can be difficult, even dangerous, to do some of the things Irene did. We may not be able to do the same actions Irene did but there is nothing stopping us from having the same attitudes Irene had. When we look outward and not just inward, focusing on helping others and not just making sure we are taken care of, it is amazing the impact we can have. I know many people, including me, have tried to live their lives inspired by Irene’s example.

By the way, though most people called her Irene, I just called her Grandma.

Note: These examples are just a few of the many things Grandma did in her life. To give credit where credit is due, I became aware of them through conversations with my father and his siblings and through two newspaper articles published many years ago in the Star Tribune by Oliver Towne and Robert T Smith.