Hope can come in an object as slim as an envelope.
Writing a note with a ballpoint pen, licking that gooey strip on the envelope flap, placing a stamp in the right -hand corner. These are not heroic actions. Yet, they can deliver a hope that forges friendships.
My envelopes of hope started arriving after spending time on a kidney dialysis bus. In October 2005, I was a reporter riding the dialysis route with photographer John Godbey. We were doing a feature on the Athens-Limestone Kidney Association transportation bus that started before dawn to take patients to their dialysis treatments.
During the ride I met John Jones, 48, who became so sick after treatment, that he couldn't drive. He still found the energy to joke with the bus driver and share his story.
Twelve days after my conversation with him and before my story and his photo ran in the newspaper, John died. I picked up the phone to call John's widow. I still wanted to share John's story, but would that only add to her grief? A raspy Southern voice answered the phone, a voice that belonged to Johnnye Mary Johns. The dialysis bus had been such a blessing to her and her husband that she gave me permission to write my story with John included.
John Godbey had what was one of the last photos taken of Johnnye Mary's husband, so he printed her an 8x10. In an envelope we sent her the picture and a copy of the story, but looking back, we sent her hope as well...hope that her life would not be full of only sadness.
Within days, I received not only my one envelope of hope with a thank you card, but a thank you phone call as well. The cards and the calls did not stop. On days when I saw the worst in mankind through the tragic stories I covered, I would sometimes hear the best of mankind through a raspy Southern voice on my work voice mail.
"This is Johnnye Mary Jones. Hope you are doing OK. I appreciate your cards. Again, this is Johnnye Mary Jones. And you have a great day."
On holidays, I received cards stuffed with Bible verses and sticker labels with her address on them so I could easily address my envelopes to her. A pen-pal relationship started. We lived in the same small city of Athens, Alabama, yet we had never met. Our friendship was based on smiles we gave each other when we saw a card in the mail or heard a voice on the phone.
The next year, a new friendship was forged when Daddy died. Johnnye Mary's phone calls and cards increased, as did her concern for my Momma. "How is Mom doing?" she often asked. Our pen-pal relationship soon evolved into a pen-pal relationship between Johnnye Mary and Momma. She helped lessen our grief by merely sending us hope in envelopes, forcing us to push aside the sadness to feel gratitude for friends and love for others.
Community events have given Johnnye Mary and I the opportunity to meet face-to-face twice, the most recent being Veterans Day 2014 at Athens State. My former co-worker and former dialysis bus rider John Godbey was there and took our photo. I now have a face to go with the voice and the handwriting, but if I had never met her, our friendship would not have been any less important.
A note, a call, they sound so mundane in this world of Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram. But a note, a call, they are personal. It's the voice and the handwriting the recipient recognizes, evoking a connection and memories.
A person does not have to make grand gestures or documentary-worthy sacrifices to impact a life. A kidney dialysis bus ride, envelopes of hope, they wove together three women's lives. For nine years the ballpoint pens have scribbled, the gooey strips on the flap have been licked, and the stamps have been affixed.
Hope is in the mail.
Here's the story that started it all...
Riding the
dialysis route
Athens group gets patients to treatment
dialysis route
Athens group gets patients to treatment
ATHENS — The person Trish Wilson helps onto the bus some mornings is not a precocious child.
The cheek she kisses goodbye is not smooth and red as an apple.
The hand that waves to her will not clutch a No. 2 pencil in an elementary classroom.
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| DAILY Photo by John Godbey Charlie Leslie, right, who is a diabetic and has one kidney, says he watches television, sleeps and clowns around with other patients or nurses while he undergoes dialysis. |
That's because Wilson is seeing off her 74-year-old grandmother, Mattie Pitts. Pitts is a woman whose wrinkles lift when she grins, whose hands grip wheelchair arms and whose left pants leg is tied in a knot where she has lost her foot to diabetes.
The bus Pitts catches belongs to the Athens-Limestone Kidney Association. It takes her three days a week for dialysis at Gambro Health Care on West Market Street.
Volunteer driver Susan Journey, 47, calls Pitts "a real hoot" as she puts her wheelchair on the automated lift and then attaches the numerous seat belts around the passenger and her wheelchair.
At the clinic, workers place Pitts in a hoist that looks like a sturdy blue tablecloth pulled up at its corners. Then they deposit her in a chair next to the dialysis machine.
The machine does what her kidneys won't do anymore. One needle takes the blood from her body and delivers it into a contraption that circulates the blood like a washing machine on the rinse cycle. For 3 hours and 45 minutes, the machine removes waste from the blood and sends it back into Pitts' body.
Pitts, who has heart failure and diabetes, is among 13 patients the association takes for dialysis. The association operates solely on donations, fund-raisers and grants. The drivers, like Journey, are not paid.
Journey's father was on dialysis for 10 months before his death. He rode the bus.
"I'd think, 'I wish I could drive for them,' " Journey says, "but at the time I was working."
When she retired from Coilplus, she began riding the bus in January 2004 to learn how to operate the equipment and drive. The drivers don't have to get a commercial driver license.
"They are a blessing," Wilson says of the volunteers. "With work, it would be such a burden for me to get my grandmother to dialysis and back to the nursing home."
Wilson meets Pitts at Athens Convalescent Center for the bus to pick up her grandmother, usually around 6:30 a.m.
Journey entertains riders by asking about their families and joking with them as she sips coffee from a travel mug and maneuvers the bus down dimly lit city streets.
Journey and eight other volunteer drivers are an integral part of the patients' lives.
Journey knows Georgia Horton, 70, will bring her pillow so she can sleep during dialysis. Horton's brother, Charlie Leslie, 68, will leave his porch light on so Journey can see. John Lane will wait for her at the end of his driveway and sit in the seat behind her driver's chair.
During a Sept. 28 trip, John Jones, 48, tells Journey she is one of his favorite drivers.
"Do I have to give you $5 for saying that?" Journey responds.
Leslie interjects that Journey and the service are important to him because "When I get off the machine, I don't feel like driving."
Jones says he, too, had problems with sickness. He says dialysis put a hardship on his family until the bus started arriving because his wife had to get someone to take him and bring him home.
"I was driving until last year, but got so sick on the machine I had to stop," Jones says.
Jones died Monday, 12 days after this conversation and two days after his 49th birthday.
Journey refers to patients like Jones as blessings, even though death lurks among them.
When three women on her route died within months of each other, Journey thought, "I can't do this."
The patients also worry.
"They'll get on the van after one dies and say, 'I wonder who will be next?' " Journey says.
Two thoughts keep Journey driving.
"I hang in there for the others who need me," she says. "And I might need this van one day."
Raymond Trafton, who helped found the association in 1978, says gas prices are hurting the group's efforts. Trafton says the fuel costs in September were more than $400.
A grant helps fund a new bus every three years, but the association must pay $8,000.
The association does not get government funding, but Trafton is asking the Athens City Council to give the association the city's gas rate. Not sure of the legality of doing so, the council is considering a $2,000 appropriation.
Journey says they need more drivers who can fill in or pick up routes.
Despite these impediments, Journey says, the group will do what it can to help the community.
"A nice 'Thank you,' just isn't good enough for these people," says Dehlia Capocci, 64, who gets dialysis because of diabetes. "They take their time, and not everyone will do that."
How to help
To make a donation or volunteer to drive, call Raymond Trafton at 232-3964.
Shop at the 28th annual crafts fair in November at the American Legion building on Cloverleaf Drive off U.S. 72.
The event is Nov. 11 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Nov. 12 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free.
Vendors can operate a booth for $40 by registering before Oct. 21. Call Eloise Phillips at 614-1354.
