It thrilled me to watch the little grandmother break into a grin
with delight when we delivered her hot lunch. My partner, Colin,
carried the thermal bag and I would lay out her soup, her hot meal
and small bowl of desert. She always stood and watched, savouring
the small luxury of being served.
And then the most important
part of our quick visit: She'd ask how cold it was outside, or what "foolishness"
city council was up to, or what we thought of the Toronto Blue Jays' prospects
that season.
Jane Van Der Voort brings a hot lunch to 82-year-old Bill Atkins. Meals on Wheels visits are important to both volunteers and the elderly they deliver to.
photograph by Hugh Wesley
For others on our route, it was the food that mattered most. One
old man, who told us every visit how his teeth had been stolen,
would smack his lips and tuck his serviette into his T-shirt when
we unpacked his lunch. Another made us wait until he'd tasted each
dish. One sad woman, who obviously hadn't moved from her couch in
days, cried when we didn't bring soup.
But it wasn't about the food for us, a group who acted as "runners"
each week for the Meals on Wheels drivers at Mid-Toronto Community
Services. No, we went to see the seniors who lived alone in Regent
Park. We were a lifeline, the only humans many of these seniors
would see for weeks on end.
"The unfortunate part is that the primary reason you're there
is to deliver a hot meal," says Shannon Stevens, director of service development
with the Ontario Community Support Association (OCSA). "If they're the first
person on a list of 10 or 12 you have to deliver to, you don't have a lot of time
to chat. It's hard to balance the social part with the need to get the meals to
the people who need them."
Recent figures for Toronto Meals on Wheels
programs show that nearly 10,000 solitary seniors who are unable to cook receive
a hot, nutritious lunch each day.
photograph by Hugh Wesley
In 1999, about 800,000 meals were delivered
and served in the city by nearly 4,000 volunteers, who gave up more than 180,000
of their own lunch hours to act as drivers and delivery folks.
Yet the
need remains great. "Meals on Wheels is always looking for volunteers,"
says Stevens, urging those interested to call local providers or volunteer agencies.
"We're trying to involve corporations that can get their employees involved
in helping, either through spending one lunch-time a week or even a month."
For me, once a week was all the nerve I could muster. It was a
tense trip through apartment building hallways in Regent Park, past
burned mattresses and groups of young men who stopped talking to
watch us pass. We were young and fit, and traveled in pairs. How
frightening would it be for a frail senior to go out for a meal,
or to go grocery shopping?
Once inside the seniors' apartments,
though, our effort was rewarded over and over again. We tried to make them talk
and smile, and we laughed the hardest when they'd offer a chuckle.
Then
came the day the little grandmother wasn't waiting for us at her door. I knocked
and waited. My heart pounded and I knocked again. I took a deep breath and tried
the handle, just as she opened the door. We saw her usual place setting for the
lunch we carried, and beside it sat a teenaged grandson.
"My grandma
said she had visitors," he said with a shrug, "so I thought I'd come
to make sure she's eating her lunch." That young man will never know just
how much his visits meant to his grandmother. And to me.
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