By Fr. Victor Gaboury
I met Mrs. Mariott on a communion call to her home. She was a frail 87 years… and lived alone in a small shack, its corners held up with a few stones… the walls inside covered with newspapers to keep out the cool night air of January and February up here in the hills of Jamaica.
No paint on the walls, nothing that looked like a home – but I knew that whatever she had there, it was home to her and every rag and bottle was important.
She welcomed me in after the struggle to open her door. In a corner, she had her wood-burning ‘stove’ – the metal rim of a car wheel. This lady wasn’t poor, she was destitute. We talked for some time... or rather, she talked for a long time, telling me about her life and what she was going through at 87, alone and without any income apart from £2 a month, her Jamaican old-age pension.
I asked her what she would be doing for Christmas and she said ‘Nothing’. She was alone, with no family. So I told her that I was alone too… and could I bring my dinner there and have it with her. She thought that would be nice.
Come Christmas day, I didn’t finish my last mission station till half past one. I thought she would be thinking I’d forgotten our date.
Getting home, I heated up our meal and hurried to her place to find that she had not doubted that I would come... eventually. She had a small table covered with a clean cloth and two seats without backs. I’d brought plates and eating utensils.. and we sat down, and she prayed for God’s blessing. She talked and ate with relish. I don’t know which she enjoyed the most – but enjoy, she did!
She talked of a relative who lived to be over a hundred years, and I asked her if she would like to live that long. She said: ‘Well, if the Lord gives me that many years, I would like it, but if he takes me tomorrow, that is O.K. too!’
I had brought a calendar with a picture of the Sacred Heart on it and some used clothing I had from home, washed, ironed and wrapped.
After dinner I gave them to her. She unwrapped the calendar and when she saw the picture, it wasn’t anything she said that struck me, but the way she touched and relished every detail as if it were gold. So it was with the other gifts as she opened them saying nothing.
After it was all over, she looked up at me with a sparkle in her eyes and said: ‘Everyone needs a boost once in a while.’
Before I left she went to the corner of the room and lifted many things off a large tin box saying that she wanted to give me something to take home. I wondered what she might have buried beneath all this.
She finally reached into the box and took out a bunch of bananas she had stored there for ripening.. and to keep them safe from rats. With pride she handed them to me to take home, happy to be able to give me something.
Too bad, I had to eat the bananas – because if I could put them with other things, recalling special moments, they would be sitting there with the most memorable, reminding me not only of my first Christmas in Jamaica but of the Christmas spent with a gracious lady.
I came away with her words ringing in my ears: ‘We all need a boost now and then’ – and I didn’t have to reflect too long to realize it was she who had given me just that.
Fr. Victor Gaboury went to Jamaica in 1986
