Can You Be My Daughter?

During the lockdown, I deliver groceries to the elderly for a local grocer. It’s a three-way win-win-win. The grocer is happy to have a reliable delivery service, the client is happy and I enjoy being of service to both. Today’s delivery was a true stand out.

‘I’m 98 years old’, she began. ‘I buried two husbands, had no children and all my family is back in Sweden.’

‘Can I help you?’ I asked, as I handed her groceries over.  ‘I can do whatever messages you have to get done – pharmacy, errands, whatever.  I live just a few blocks away and I’m happy to help. My name is Andrea’.

‘And mine is Katherine’.   We smiled at each other through our face masks. ‘Yes,’ she said, her eyes bright and shining. “I could really ask your help. I need your messages.’

‘Sure’, I said.  Banking, post office, whatever you need.’

She began to speak, stopped herself and then asked, ‘Can I tell you what I really need? Would you be my daughter?’

For an instant, I wasn’t sure what to say, how to process that request. Things both slow down and speed up during times of crisis.  We slow down, doing less, being more.Days are long. Yet formalities shorten. Barriers between strangers tumble quickly during shared hardship.  There was no request for references. It came out so innocently. So sweetly. A simple acknowledging that yes, she did need assistance. I was struck by how my heart swelled. I hesitated and then, ‘Yes,’ I answered.  ‘Yes. I’ll be your daughter.’ Our faces covered by masks, our eyes did the smiling instead. I agreed to return the following morning at 10am.  Katherine agreed to have her list of messages ready.

I return to Katherine’s at precisely 10am the following day and she invites me in. A native of Estonia, she was a secretary in her 20’s during the war (born in 1922) and lived through friends dying, bombs falling, the boat under her burning as the ammunitions caught fire.  She fled for her life by train and boat, slept in fields, witnessed her father arrested and exiled to Siberia.

And now, here she was, happily welcoming in a new friend.  As I turn 60, I realize that the ability to make friends is not given to everyone.  If fear and suspicion close down your heart, you repel, not attract.  Katherine attracted.  She drew people to her and she had certainly drawn me in.  I told her of my trip to Estonia.  That pleased her immensely. Then she caught me by surprise.

‘I need an executor for my estate,’ she said.

‘What?’ This was way more than fetching postage stamps and corn flakes.

‘My executor friend is old, sick, not able to take duty and I need executor.’

‘You’ve met me twice and you now want me to be your executor?  This is a big responsibility. You don’t even know me’.

‘I know I can trust you’, she said smiling.

‘Well, you can’, I said hesitatingly, ‘but I can’t give you an answer right now.  I need to talk to my brother, to find out what’s involved.’ (I didn’t need to ask my brother any such thing but I needed a moment to process this.)

To her credit, she didn’t press the point and the conversation then switched to camera film and other sundries.  She’d made a list.  I tried to listen but my mind had already gone off to ponder - Was I up to the task? Did I need to take this on? I went home, sat in my meditation space and asked for guidance.

By 4pm the messages were done and I’d decided.  ‘I’ll do it,’ I told her, as I handed her two (!) bottles of Riesling, stamps and her Kodak film.  She had no computer, still read the paper paper, took pictures with a camera and wrote letters.   ‘I’ll do it because if I was in your position, I’d want someone to do that for me.’

She smiled and brought out her wartime book, filled with messages and pictures from her days as a war secretary, and began to tell me about her life.  When I left an hour later, she handed me a copy of her will, her mandate and the story of her escape.  All three still sit on my dining room table, not yet opened.  Opening them opens me up to her life and some small voice tells me ‘piano, piano’, this is going to change me.