I am most of the way down the pharmacy aisle when I hear someone calling my name. The pharmacist’s assistant hurries toward me, cellphone in hand.
We’d been talking, a moment earlier, about my latest prescription, one my doctor deems urgent but which, unhappily, is cost prohibitive. Exceedingly cost prohibitive. Small countries could meet their national budget on what I will have to pay for a 30-day supply of these pills.
The assistant had been looking up my insurance online, trying to gauge deductibles versus health plans, etc., in hopes of something that would lower the price. A gracious gesture, but one that hadn’t yielded any clear path to affordability. I’d thanked her and left.
Now, she jogs down the aisle to show me something on her phone: a program from the company making the pills that might offer a coupon, and cut the cost a bit. The website looks formidable: a pharmaceutical Straits of Magellan to navigate. She apologizes for that, but wishes me luck and heads back to her chemical cache.
That evening, my wife, weary from the trials of a day in the classroom after a night of not-much-sleep, sits down to wade into the website. It is something along the lines of Lewis and Clark tracking their endless way out to the Pacific. Like them, she emerges from the wilderness tired but triumphant, handing me a sheet of paper that might or might not reduce the high cost of health.
Next day, we present it to the pharmacist’s assistant, who pushes up her sleeves, faces her computer, and braces for her own battle with the Red Tape. It is five minutes to 5 on a Friday; we are the last customers between her and her weekend, requiring tedious and time-consuming effort to assist. She smiles, though, and just asks us to give her a few minutes.
The minutes pass, and comes a little shriek of joy from back of the counter. “Guess how much!” she beams, happily stapling papers and stuffing my small paper bag with the pills. “Ten dollars,” she almost sings, aglow with our combined accomplishment. “Ten dollars for the whole thing!”
Customer service. You’ve heard of it.
Mid-evening, and time for a spot o’ cream. I fetch a bowl, find a scoop, pull out a carton, and … soup. A freezer full of wet boxes and bags. An ice maker producing mere water.
Refrigerator shopping at break of dawn, and tough news: anything we buy will be delivered to our doorstep in … two weeks. Or so. That’s a lot of lost food to throw away, with most of the frozen stuff too far gone already.
We pull out of our driveway as the garage door of the elderly widow lady next door goes up. Pulling past, I glance over to see a near-empty garage, except for: a giant refrigerator. What are the chances …
“It’s empty,” she says, laughing, a minute and some urgent doorbell-ringing later. “Use the whole thing, as long as you like.” She actually hands us her extra garage-door opener.
Neighbors. You know.
He is a hanger-on and a hanger-around at church. Hard to help. Hard to feel sorry for. A man whose plans for his life collapsed unexpectedly decades ago, and he’s never recovered. From time to time, he meets gracious souls who reach out to him, in one way or another. But their mercies seem to slide off of him. He sits in his apartment, eking out life on Social Security … hoarding and mourning and ranting at the life he has made for himself. Unwilling, or unable, to change.
A thunderbolt shatters his world; the landlords of the apartment building he’s lived in for 30 years are raising the rent. He can’t afford it. They want him, and the accumulated scraps and detritus of three decades, out. He is given a deadline, which marches relentlessly toward him, unchallenged. He must do something. He cannot, will not, do anything. Just moves a few empty boxes around on the floor – fearful, frustrated, trapped in his paralyzed mind.
The dark day comes, and at the door, miraculously, appear a few young, strapping men and a handful of older ones from his church, who’ve hired the muscles to handle the heavy lifting. Together, they all pack him up. Dodging hordes of roaches, they carry the yellowed papers and dust-crusted knick-knacks out the door and down the stairs. They fill eight dumpsters with the shambles of a mostly wasted life.
Day’s end, and he sits in a new studio apartment, amid a few last pieces of cherished furniture … not really sure how he got there.
He is free now, in a way, if he wants to be. Time will tell if he wants to be.
He doesn’t know what to do with his gratitude. Few of us do. We marvel at the kindness of strangers – and of friends. Some are able to deftly embrace such generosity, while some of us are always a little dazed by these serendipities – these small, sudden mercies. Amid the din of this raging, brutal world, we wonder at hearts so open, willing, and able to just … give.
This weekend, for me, has seen a lot of such love: in a solicitous clerk, a patient wife, an obliging neighbor, the example of a few good men. And in the presence of the God Who stirs such gentle love within them.
“Freely you have received,” Jesus says, in a voice that suggests He is looking at me. “Freely give.”
So, I guess I’m freer, too, now, than I was a few days ago.
Time will tell, what may come of that.
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