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"Blueberries on Memorial Day"
by Kim Howley, Pantry Manager at SSKP's Old Saybrook Pantry
The Old Saybrook Pantry offered a choice of strawberries or blueberries in May. It's been about a year, sometime around the beginning of offering a couple of items by choice on the curb, when I ordered those first blueberries in response to a request by a guest. Some guests take a little more warming up time than others and so was the case for this particular guest. Our relationship began with very little conversation and most of it was short greetings; “how are you?” “good” “you’re all set” “yup,” no soul bearing in-depth stuff between us. Something changed along the way. I can’t tell you when. I can guess to the why. I can tell you where, the FCCOS parking lot with the guest in their car and me near my shopping cart. Our pantry friend was going through a tough time. While there wasn’t much I could do to help I asked anyways. “Do you have any blueberries, Kim?” was not the response I expected. “Come see me next week. We’ll have them for you” I said, and we did and not just for that friend but for all our friends to choose. Turned out that blueberries were very popular.
We haven’t seen our friend for a while now. One of the downfalls of this job is that we don’t always get to know how someone’s story is unfolding. Sometimes a guest stops visiting us because they’ve found employment that pays them enough money to support themselves and they no longer need our help. Sometimes a guest moves out of the area to be closer to a support network. Sometimes another guest will tell me that a guest has passed away. Sometimes I’m left to wonder about the possibilities. With this pantry friend it’s that last one. I can’t say with absolute certainty where our friend has been, but I can say with absolute certainty that I think about them often, very often. Blueberries won’t be the same for me again. “Memorable” doesn’t carry enough weight for how I feel about our friend if I’m honest. Unforgettable may be a better word. I think I can safely state that our friend didn’t see themselves as being seen in the world when they first started visiting our pantry. I think that we changed that a bit or at least changed it for them on Tuesday afternoons. That’s no small feat.
If faith can be represented with a mustard seed, then compassion and dignity and love look a lot like blueberries to me now. I hope if you see a blueberry on the Memorial Day picnic buffet this weekend, you’ll think about our friend, and I hope they feel seen no matter which spacious sky or purple mountain or fruited plain they are on now.
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