“People don’t talk to each other like they used to. You used to know your neighbors, and if you needed something you would help each other. When I have needed something, I used to be able to turn to my neighbors. That doesn’t happen anymore,” said 80-year-old Area Agency on Aging Senior Companion Volunteer Kaye Smith, through a voice becoming choked up with emotion. “That is why when they showed up to help, it made me feel so thankful. To find someone that is so kind, considerate, thoughtful, and helpful? There is not one word that describes it.”
Four years ago, Kaye signed up to be an Area Agency on Aging, AmeriCorps Senior Volunteer after seeing a story about it in the Niles Senior Center Newsletter. She was not working anymore and wanted to help others. She felt like volunteering would be a great way to stay active but didn’t know that ultimately her volunteerism would spark someone to volunteer to help her.
Kaye is currently a Senior Companions to four area seniors. One of them is named Georgianna, or Bootsie as her friends call her. Kaye and Bootsie forged an instant bond after they had realized their late husbands had grown up together. Bootsie’s daughter Tamera would come over often to sit and chat with both the ladies. Sometimes Tamera would call Kaye to thank her for helping her mom, and to check and see if Kaye was doing was ok.
One evening, while she was talking to Tamera on the phone, she mentioned the problem she had with the bushes in her back yard. A friend had pulled up the overgrown bushes for her and piled them by Kaye’s shed. Soon animals started to make their homes in the bushes and worked their way into the shed.
Tamera said she liked to do that kind of work, and she showed up a few days later with her friends Liz and Sammy and they got to it. “They got rid of the bushes, mowed my yard and cleaned up the shed,” said Kaye. “Then they came back and replaced my broken gate and installed a nice back door. They were back another day measuring my back porch to fix it up and help me get organized.”
Kaye has lived in Niles since the early 60’s and has raised four children and has 10 grandchildren; she even has one that she picks up from school every day. After high school she got a job at Simplicity Pattern and worked there with her husband until he passed away in 1984. When her job ended at Simplicity, she went to Alaska for a few months and hiked down the side of a glacier. Kaye still likes to keep busy. Even now, with four senior companion clients, she still does her own laundry, grocery shopping, and spends time with her grandchildren.
Kaye says that she really enjoys being a Senior Companion because it helps keep her brain more alert. She also likes the fact that being a companion gets her out, keeps her active, and that she gets to have conversations with other people, which she greatly enjoys.
“That is the best part. I like to say, if you don’t use it, you lose it,” jokes Kaye.
Erma Bombeck once said, “Volunteers are the only human beings on the face of the earth who reflect this nation’s compassion, unselfish caring, patience, and just plain loving one another.”
This simple story of love in action lifted my spirits this week. I hope it did yours as well.