The Gold Of Love

“Ok saw something today that will stay with me for a lifetime. Went to Target. Outside leaving the store was a young gentleman that had a handicap involving his legs and he was walking with his cane. He fell right there on the sidewalk facedown. There was a family that was going by him with two boys around 10 ish or so (just my guess) the father neither the mother nor the kids offered to help this poor young man. I had sandals on so I couldn't run fast but I wasn't as close to him as the others. NO ONE HELPED HIM - NOT ONE PERSON. He was pushing himself up when I finally reached him and refused my help he said he was fine. Though I could do nothing for him I was astounded that people closer never stopped. He had laid there for a few seconds struggling and they could have stopped and helped. What a lesson for those parents to teach their two boys. If someone falls just walk by.............. I am just blown away by all this.”

These words written by Joleen Conner of Maine on an incident she saw today outside of a Target store in Maine. What sadness that people do not stop to help a stranger. If it was their loved one, they would pray that some kind person would have helped him or offered help.  On December 7th, 2004, I fell to the ground tripping over some carts from the inside that had not been taken in and it was a rainy day and I slipped and displaced my left shoulder. A kind young woman named then Nancy Thompson, now Nancy Rohnacher Bowen stopped to help me up, along with my husband. She was very concerned about my fall and she told me she was a nurse supervisor at St. Joseph’s Hospital and she was on her way to work. She insisted I go there to be checked out and she met me there and she was there for me when we came in our car.

She made sure I was taken care of at once, came down to check on me after the x-rays were read and generally made a hard time more pleasanter with her consideration and devotion to a stranger. I fell at a Michaels Craft store in Timonium.

Nancy and I have remained friends since then and now over the Internet. Her kindness to me overwhelmed me and she always kidded me that she never got to do her shopping at Michaels, because she stopped for me and then she had to go to work where she was on her way to, before getting a few things at Michaels

Kindness does not cost anything other than maybe a little hindrance to what you were going to do in the first place. How nice it is to feel you have done something for someone especially a stranger in need.

My little grandson was kind to a kid in pre-school five years ago when the child was homesick and scared to be away from home. Ethan came over to him to console him and to hand him a Kleenex tissue for his teary eyes. The teacher told my daughter-in-law that she had never seen such empathy from one small child to another child in all her twenty years of teaching. Ethan was only three years old then.

I guess it is what we learn at home that we practice when we are away from home. This couple and their two kids did not learn this from their parents and they are not teaching it to their children.

Nancy was what we call a mensch, a good soul, one who does the right thing during a wrong happening. The feeling they receive is one of the kindness they performed and how they assisted someone one day when something bad happened to that person.

Mom always said that I loved to give rather than receive and she had never known a child like me who felt good upon giving.

People like Nancy are the golden folks of this life. This is the kind of gold you cannot take to the bank; it is the gold of love you give to others. The Maine family will never know the gold of love; perhaps one day someone will give it to them and then they will perceive what it feels like and they in return will give it to someone else some day in an emergency.

Joleen Conner who I have never met is a golden person too, because she tried to help this man when others ignored him.

She too is a mensch, a good soul and that is as high as you can achieve.