"It seems like God sent Partners in Care"

As a driver for Partners in Care, you never really know what you will encounter in a ride. Most of the time, the rides are just sweet little visits with someone in your community, but sometimes, they can mean the world to someone in need.

Lena and I met on an oppressively hot afternoon at the Brooklyn Park Senior Center. Her husband had been a member for years and had enjoyed the service of our volunteers but Lena, who never learned to drive, was a very independent woman who enjoyed walking around her small community. However, today, as we stood talking in the air conditioned lobby and watching the heat raise in waves off the sidewalk, that independence looked... well, hot. So Lena accepted an offer of a drive in an air conditioned car back to her home, where we shared lunch and stories.
It seemed within days I was heading back over to her home to interview her to become a member of our program. In the next few months, Partners became a trustworthy addition to her network of support for her appointments. By December, her husband's health was failing, and he had been in a series of surgeries to try and save him. However, in the midst of all of this, Lena still needed to go to her own doctor's appointments. One of these simple appointments, on a ride with a Partners in Care volunteer, turned into one of the beautiful acts of community we are privileged to see everyday.


"I had been all night in my husband's hospital room, so that morning, my daughter took me home so Partners in Care could take me to the cancer center. We didn't know he was dying, he had just gone to dialysis, so I went home. She took me to the cancer center where we had a long wait. The lady from Partners in Care's name was Janet. She was from Boston. After my appointment, she took me to Shoppers to pick up a few things before taking me home because I hadn't' had anything to eat that day. When we got home, all I wanted to do was eat my lunch, so when the phone rang, I asked her, " If that phone rings, I'm not going to answer it cause i haven't had no lunch. Don't answer it unless its the hospital, but if its them, please just say hello". And she said, its your daughter. I picked up the phone, and Rebecca said, "Mom, Dad's going to die, you have to come." and I said "Oh, my, I dont even have a way to get there". And Janet took me to the hospital. All the way up to Union Memorial. When we got there, she even offered to come in and stay with me. But she had already done enough. Without her, I would never have made it to my daughter's side, and I don't want any of credit to come to me, it was all her. When your husbands dying and you got nobody, and you can drive, what are you going to do? Well it seems like God sent Partners in Care."

Anna's Girls

Just before I got married this spring, I talked Lucas, our Volunteer Maryland Coordinator and my little brother, into one last interview before I left for my nuptials (leaving him with the paperwork, of course). We found ourselves at the home of the Gibbons family in Brooklyn. The Gibbons' family consists of Anna Gibbons and her two daughters, Helen and Paula Gibbons. They live together with their rambunctious Pug, Chris. Lucas and I sat down in their dining room and laid out three interview packets to begin work. It was the longest interview I've ever conducted as we laughed, told stories, and drank iced tea. However, there was one moment of sobering truth that I will never forget.

Anna explained to Lucas and I that she and her daughters had been to settle their funeral arrangements last week. They had picked out and paid for everything that would be necessary, which lifted a huge weight off of Anna's shoulders. But there was still something missing. See, Anna's daughters are both disabled adults. They are both talented and capable women, but they depend on Anna, especially since neither daughter drives. Partners in Care is the missing piece for these women. Anna said, with little tears shining softly, "It is such a big relief to have that off my shoulders for these girls of mine... to know that we have an organization called Partners in Care...that they can call someone that will take care of them by taking them places and doing things for them, if I go first."


As I writer, I would rather leave that last line hanging for you as it has resonated in my mind ever since. The depth of relief in those women, the strength in Anna's heart to want to care for her daughters, even after the event of her death, is a love that goes beyond my ability to describe it. All I know is I am grateful to be a part of Partners in Care, a part of the solution, and a piece of Anna's hand in caring for her girls.

Partners in Care needs you!

“Partners In Care is about people made up out of love.” starts the sweet face of Della Jackson in our Partners in Care video. Everyone who sees that video and has experienced the community of Partners in Care knows exactly what she is talking about. Della has been able to stay in her home because of the loving care and support of Partners in Care volunteers. It is her story, and the stories of every Partners in Care member, that make our program come alive to those who haven't experienced it first hand.

Beginning last week, we will be publishing the stories of how Partners in Care has touched different members' lives in this blog which can be accessed via the www.partnersincare.org website. Additionally, the stories will be published in hard copy form, and we are hoping eventually have a book of Partners in Care lore.

However, we need your stories! If you have a time when Partners in Care, or even just a story of how aging in general, has affected your life, we would love to hear from you. Submissions can be written by you, if you prefer to write yourself, or, they can be written by Partners in Care staff. You can remain anonymous if you wish to do so. Please contact Kaely Linker at Partners in Care to learn more about how you can contribute to this project.

Happy Dependence Day!

As a way of introducing the point and purpose of this blog, I thought I would tell you about what Partners in Care has meant to me in the short year Ive been working there. But as the final date of the blog's debut became July 4th, I began to wonder if it was more appropriate to comment on the similarities between the holiday the blog would be published on and our work here at Partners in Care.

Independence Day is a day that we celebrate the willingness of our founders to strike out against an unfair tyrant. But as each signer wrote his name on the fated document, he declared his independence from England and his dependence on every other man in the room. Together, these men would risk everything; their lives, their homes, their fortune, but, together, they would eventually achieve their life's goal and grant us the freedom to live independently of England.

Every day, Partners in Care works to help elderly and disabled adults remain independent in their homes. But this independence requires dependence on others. We actively and willingly depend on our volunteers, our gracious donations, our cheerful members for every part of what makes us work. Even among the office staff, at moments of need, of struggle, of triumph, we depend upon each other for the love and support that keeps us going.

The story I was originally planning to tell you had to do with my own moment of absolute need, when Barbara and Joyce stood around me and hugged me with all the love and support I could ever want. Though I'll tell you that story in another post, it is that moment that made me realize I could never expect to work in a “normal” work environment again. This place, Partners in Care, is a haven where people are taken for who they are, where they are, and what they can give, and expected to be dependent and depended on. We can take nothing for granted.

And it is out of a grateful heart that I begin to write this blog to tell the stories of all that have been touched by their own dependence. We wage our own war against all the struggles that threaten to force us as a society to drift apart into loneliness, and these are our war stories. Our tales of the battlefield remind us of our higher calling, our greater purpose, and our shining reward: the freedom of dependence upon the love and support of our neighbors.