Local Dispatch: Meals on Wheels delivers inside look at lives of needy
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Local Dispatch
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My volunteer service for the Meals on Wheels program is filled with many rewarding moments, an experience that for years has connected me with recipients who appreciate the delivery of a hot lunch five days a week.
But I also have developed a sense of pathos for some of the folks I visit in central Westmoreland County. I'm convinced that some of the elderly should not be living alone. At times, I hold my breath in homes that might be serious accidents waiting to happen.
They are where folks live alone and are barely able to make it to the door to receive the food. In some homes, the door is left unlocked for the delivery person because the recipient may be immobile. For those who are ambulatory it seems like an eternity before the door is opened.
I was shocked on one delivery when I knocked on the door and it seemed too long before the elderly lady shuffled to the door. Trouble was she could not unlock the door to let me in. What to do?
I thought about calling 911, but then I simply yelled the instruction on how to unlock the small twist lock on the doorknob. From what I could tell it was the only exit out of the house. I feared that had there been a fire, the results would have been tragic.
We often are asked to help shut-ins with quick tasks, such as retrieving the mail. One gentleman could not open the spout of a milk container and I offered to do it for him.
Then there was the lady who could not write out a check and she asked me to help her. Another gentleman, confined to a wheelchair, brightens up when I enter his basement living quarters to spend a few moments making small talk about anything. I feel that I've eased his loneliness and he seems grateful.
But there are other more severe problems, such as terrible clutter inside and outside some of the homes. I shuddered in disbelief when I entered the apartment of a woman who is a compulsive hoarder.
Piles of all sorts of stuff lined a thin path from the door to where she sat in her living room. There was nowhere to put the food. She told me to put it in the kitchen, and I had to hop over all sorts of junk that would make for dangerous conditions in an emergency.
First Published March 10, 2010 12:00 am
