Faithful in Small Things

I was shopping at an antiques sale in Tennessee, United States, and had just purchased a sampler to add to my collection - a little needlework girl sharing a bouquet of daisies with a neighbour over a picket fence. Below was an old saying: "Action speaks louder than words".

At the final booth, the elderly proprietor overheard me say that I was leaving and freeing up a parking space nearly. He was short-winded, battling emphysema and cancer, he explained, and his wife had just learned she had luch cancer.

"This will be our last show," he said, shaking his head at his charmingly displayed inventory.

With the chance to have my choice parking spot, the frail man followed me out to the lot to move his vehicle.

I started my car and waited, but he never came. "Probably changed his mind and is just going to leave me hanging. I'll give him five more minutes," I muttered to myself.

Then I spotted him in the rear view mirror, struggling on his cane as he huffed and puffed his way to my car window.

"Found an even closer spot, young lady," he said. "One with plenty of room for the wife's wheelchair when we packed up."

He pointed to an area nearly a block away, a huge distance for someone in his weak condition. "I wanted to let you know and to thank you again for the kind offer."

This gracious, true-to-his-word man had many excuses not to walk that extra distance. It was, after all, a small thing.

Yet, it had been important to treat someone he would never see again the way he would want to be treated.

"Actions speak louder than words." I'd heard that maxim all my life. But now I'd seen it lived.

A thought-provoking take by Roberta Messner (Everyday Blessings) sent to Starmag by Liew Swee Mio