The Mitzvah Lady

When I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, it was easy for me at first.

Half a low dosage pill twice a day and I was fine.

I remember teaching a class in American literature and, when the students had left, simply twirling around the room in joy that the pills eliminated all symptoms of the disease and allowed me to pursue a job that I dearly loved: teaching.

Eleven years later, the pills are losing their effectiveness even though my doctor has increased the dose to the maximum.

And I have had to retire from teaching since I can no longer write and grade papers and my speech was affected by the deep brain stimulation that I underwent for the Parkinson’s.

There is compensation for this, however: I’ve discovered a  goodness in people that I didn’t know existed.

I am very unsteady on my feet and fall a lot.

There is always somebody nearby who rushes to my aid.

I  have been picked up off the floor of our local supermarket, picked up  from a sidewalk outside a theater by a group of unrelated strangers, and helped to sit down by patrons of a restaurant, who ran to my aid when I got dizzy and was about to collapse.

I use a walker and have only to approach a closed door to a restaurant or office to find someone rushing to hold the door open for me.

One day I was having coffee in our local Panera and I had collapsed the walker to lean it against the wall.

When I got up to leave, the mechanism jammed so that I could not open the walker. 

Immediately, I was surrounded by other patrons all eager to help me.

And this goodness transcends race and social class.

I am a middle-class old white lady,  yet a young black man with dreadlocks helped when I fell on a street in Philadelphia, where I had gone for  the deep brain stimulation. 

He put his arm around my shoulder and told me to lean on him.

He then got me into a building where I could sit down.

As other people who had come to my aid left one by one, he stayed with me to see that I was recovered enough to continue walking. 

In fact, I had a hard time stopping him from calling 911.

My best friend, who is Jewish, tells me that I am allowing these people to perform mitzvahs,  good and unselfish actions.

I was hoping in retirement to do volunteer work and give back to the community, but my physical disabilities prevent me.

I am gladdened, therefore, if my disabilities can encourage a person to go out of his way to do a good deed and perhaps develop this charitable side of his character.

It always seemed to me overly sentimental at the end of A Christmas Carol when Tiny Tim tells his father that he is glad that people at church saw that he was a cripple because it might remind them of the one who made the lame to walk and the blind  to see.

My mother did not encourage sentimentality, and one if her worst criticisms of something was that it was “drippy,” meaning overly emotional.

But now I think that Tiny Tim was on to something.

Certainly, Scrooge performs many mitzvahs as part of his redemption.

We never know how our life is affecting those around us.