PART 2 — THE CARD
Old Mr. Lindgren gripped his walker, steadied himself, and held up a Meals on Wheels thank-you card so the room could see it.
You all know I broke my hip last winter, he said. What I never told you is how they found me.
He looked at his grandson Craig. In January, during the blizzard, I went down on my kitchen floor and I could not get up. My phone was on the counter. I lay there through the night and all the next day. Nobody knew. Nobody was coming.
His voice shook. On the second day I heard a key in the door. It was the Meals on Wheels driver. She was the only soul in the whole county who went out in that storm. She found me, covered me with her own coat, and stayed on the floor holding my hand until the ambulance fought its way through the snow.
The woman Craig laughed at for driving soup around had been the one person willing to face a blizzard, and she was the only reason his grandfather lived to sit at that table.
The doctors said one more day and that would have been it, the old man said. One more day. He turned the card over. On it, in her writing, she had put her own number and the words, call me anytime, you are not alone out here.
Craig, the insurance man who liked to mention his companys stock, had gone gray in the face.
Karen just quietly cut her mothers cake. Your grandpa is tougher than any blizzard, she said. I only opened the door.
My daughter delivers lunches to shut-ins. Her son-in-law has an app for that. The app does not go out in the snow. Karen does.