I’ve been buying shoes and clothes for Delilah (not her real name) for five or six years now; she has little or no money to buy the clothes she needs to be comfortable or warm. She has a lot of pride and dignity.

She swallows both when she asks for help, which she often has to do.

She mostly keeps to herself and avoids conversation, even at meals.

It took her a year or two to trust me and ask me for help; we’ve come a long way. I can’t say we are friends, but I can see we are comfortable with one another.

When she needs something from me, she comes up to me and asks me how I am and how the dogs and animals are. I can tell she has something on her mind, and after a while, I ask her if I can help her. She hates just to come out and ask; it’s hard for her.

She tells me she worked all her life and always cared for herself. She can’t do that now.

At the Mansion, the aides try and mostly succeed in being sensitive, but sometimes the work is intimate, complex, and potentially hurtful. I know getting help is difficult for Delililah, I try to tread carefully and patiently. I can’t make it easy for her.

For a while, she hoarded the clothes I gave her, and the aides found them in a massive pile in her room. She said she didn’t want to wear them out because she would have nothing to wear.

For the last week or so, she has been trying to talk to me but balking, struggling, and giving up. Something was bothering her; she wanted or needed help that was very difficult to ask for. She couldn’t do it.

Privacy is sometimes tricky in assisted care; residents depend on others for their needs. I asked an aide if she was all right, and she seemed, for the first time, not to be able to ask me for something.

The aide blushed and shook her head. “She doesn’t know how to ask you for what she needs. She says, “I just can’t ask Jon for this.” I understood this. She came from a culture where men were not trusted and certainly not trusted to hear the intimate details of a woman’s body.

Delilah has never met anyone like me; I’m a Martian to her, a strange man who comes from the other world and pops in and buys her things she can’t afford. And won’t take any money. This is almost inconceivable, and I doubt she will ever get used to it.

This went on for a few days; yesterday at the Mansion, the aide, a wonderfully loving and sensitive person, an advocate for the residents,  and someone who lets me know when people need things.

She took me aside and said she wanted to talk privately. She had something to ask me that had to be private. I saw Delilah hovering down the hall; she looked anxious and uncomfortable but watched me closely as if I were about to explode.

I have helped many women get things at the Mansion, I had an inkling of where she was going, but I always had to stop and think about how to handle it well. And this was something new.

The aide was in a tough spot, trying to protect Delilah’s dignity and privacy and not upset or offend me (which she has never done.) Delilah wanted and needed something, but she was very frightened about how I would respond. This has never happened between us.

We started to dance back and forth; I started playing 20 questions. I learned it was a personal item, a kind of razor, a kind of brush, perhaps for legs, or even a mustache, said the aide, and Delilah was closer now, nodding and listening closely.

I took out my iPhone, logged into Amazon, and started pulling up photos of razors, brushes, and toilet items, eventually getting to women’s razors. Delilah doesn’t have a mustache that I could see, and I know she has a razor for her legs; I bought her one.

The aide was struggling. “She just doesn’t want to ask you for this,” she said, and a bell went off in my head. Delilah is older and formal; she comes from another time. I don’t think her experience with the men in her life was ever positive. She was afraid of offending me.

I scrolled down and held up a photo of what I thought she needed and wanted. I could see the relief on the aide’s face; she nodded two or three times.

Delilah coughed and turned away. I approached her and showed her a photo of the kind of device I thought she was asking for and needed. It was something she needed now.

“Delilah,” I said, “I am not delicate or easy to offend. I want to help you get what you need. We will still be friends; we all need things we don’t always want to discuss. And I’ve been doing this awhile; I can promise you I’ve seen it all.”

A second aide came over to help; I figured out what to get. She nodded when I was close.

Then, success. She pointed to something that came up on the screen. I’m not going to mention it here. I don’t think she would want me to do it, even anonymously. The thing she needed did not bother me or disturb me.

“Bless you,” she said and walked quickly away; she was red in the face and looked exhausted. “Thanks for being honest with me,” I said to her, retreating.

I bought the thing she wanted; thanks again to Amazon.

It will be at the Mansion in a day or so. I thought about how difficult it must be to need the most personal and intimate things and ask a person you hardly know to help get them for you.

The Mansion work is so important to me. I learn something every time I go there, and I am working hard to understand empathy and how it works.

I’ve learned something worth learning when I can stand in the shoes of an 80-year-old woman, a farm wife with no living relatives or friends. My goal at this point is to be a better human. There is nowhere to go but inside.

Thanks, Delilah, for helping me and trusting me.

___

(Thanks for donating to the effort to get more life-like cat dolls for the Mansion residents. I got $550, and three more cats are heading for the Mansion. Any money I get will go towards getting more. You can donate via Paypal, [email protected], or Venmo, Jon Katz@Jon-Katz-13. You can also send a check to Jon Katz. P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. Everyone there who wants one will get one. If you aren’t comfortable shopping online, I will do it.)