SUPPORT SYSTEMS: UNSELFISH, HEARTFELT GIVING
by Thelma T. Reyna, Ph.D

Carol was 68 when she died in Duarte, California, a few weeks ago. Her body was riddled with cancer, and she was in a wheelchair. Her last years of life had been extraordinarily difficult. Before the cancer, Carol’s activities had been circumscribed by other illnesses, including bronchial asthma. She had lived in poverty for most of her life as a single mother and had been cared for by an only son, a middle-aged, unmarried man with disabilities of his own.

The two of them lived in a modest home in a simple neighborhood, ate simple meals, hardly went out, and served as one another’s almost sole source of moral support and friendship. In the last weeks of her life, Carol was placed in a hospice home, accepting the fact that her cancer was beyond treatment, and she would die soon.

A Stalwart Spirit
        
But Carol was on a mission to help others, to support them as much as she could. Her poverty-stricken life had been lived thus, and such it was during her final days as well. In a wheelchair, Carol rolled down the hospice hallways, visiting fellow patients whom she felt were worse off than she. No one can know how deep her own pain was, or how difficult it was to maintain a happy face, to laugh and joke with others as if she were not ill, were not dying. But whatever she knew of such sadness and pain did not escape her lips.

At her small, simple memorial service, we—those more fortunate materially in life than Carol had been—heard testimonial after testimonial about Carol’s supportiveness toward others. We heard from the single mother whom Carol had taken into her home more than a decade ago, when this young, homeless Latina with a little son needed food and security. The meager resources Carol shared made all the difference in the survival of this woman, and eventually, as the years passed, of all five of her children.

We heard from the shy, disabled woman who needed to escape a violent, abusive marriage but had nowhere to go, and Carol took her in as her own daughter, for years giving her moral as well as material support and eventually helping her regain her self-respect.

We heard about when, as an invalid prior to her cancer diagnosis, Carol would entertain visitors to her small home with delightful anecdotes, laughing heartily and making each visitor feel special. When Carol had nothing to give but her attention and joyfulness, she gave freely of these.

We heard about when, prior to her becoming an invalid, Carol would assemble heartfelt “CARE packages”—little snacks, good used clothing, etc.—for homeless people she knew and delivered these personally. Though Carol had little, she never forgot that there were many other people who had far less than she, and she brightened these people’s lives through her simple but authentic gestures.

What “Support” Truly Means

It’s easy to think of supportiveness toward others in large, dramatic terms, the most recent one being, of course, the global response to Haiti’s earthquake and its horrendous aftermath. Before that, it was Hurricane Katrina, then the tsunami that struck Indonesia, then the 9/11 attack, and so on.  Catastrophe after catastrophe has elicited human compassion and collaboration in massive outpourings of financial, rescue, and rebuilding resources.

It’s also easy to think of supportiveness in terms of donations, either of goods or money. Americans have historically been among the most giving, most generous of the world’s people. Many of us regularly donate to children’s hospitals, to Doctors Without Borders, and other worthy charities. It’s often ordinary people like us who comprise the backbone of such efforts.

But it’s sometimes hard for us to remember that supporting others, which ultimately involves giving to others—giving them our attention, advice, time, joy, love, trust, encouragement, and so on—is not necessarily monetary and is not limited to the privileged. The beauty of altruism is that it’s something all of us can do...if we genuinely care about others. Those of us who experienced some level of poverty in our lifetimes know this instinctively, for we saw our financially-poor parents, grandparents, neighbors, and friends giving us intangibles that made all the difference in the world to our evolution of selves and spirit.

We’ve all heard the old cliché that sometimes the wealthy are “rich in funds but poor in spirit.” These unfortunate people’s “supportiveness” may be predicated too strongly on money and may be paltry in giving from the heart, rather than the pocketbook. One of the things I loved about John F. Kennedy, Jr., was his firm belief that it was easy for rich people like him to “just write a check” for charity; however, showing up and spending time with those in need was harder, but more important. He did this so well!

“No Man Is an Island”: Still True!

All our lives, we’ve heard about the importance of others:  “No man is an island.”  “Man does not live by bread alone.”  The complexity of our society—from today’s difficult economic times, to our immense cultural diversity, to high-tech interconnectedness—makes these proverbs just as, if not more, pertinent than ever. Supporting one another—truly giving of ourselves and our humanity to others—is vital for our global well-being.

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This essay appeared on the Powerful Latinas website at http://www.powerfullatinas.com
on April 12, 2010