This story is part of Love For Our Elders’ celebration of National Share-A-Story Month. We encourage you to share your story with us this month by clicking here.

In ninth grade English class, we read Tuesdays with Morrie, a memoir by Mitch Albom recounting time spent with an elder sociology professor. Their rapport tugs at any reader’s heartstrings, but as a freshman, I did not fully understand the value of their relationship. That would quickly change because of Cynthia.

I had decided to volunteer at my local senior community and was tasked with ‘friendly visiting’ which I was excited for. One of my first visits was to Cynthia. In a hospital bed with her feet propped up by a pillow and a labyrinth of tubes across her body, she greeted me with a smile, and I immediately felt my cheek bones rise and my jaw drop as a grin pasted itself across my face.

Never in a million years would I have thought I would become best friends with this stranger.

Yet this Saturday, I decided to strike up a chat with this woman. Though I have always been one to engage in spontaneous conversation with strangers, my introduction to this 79-year-old came with significantly less grace. I awkwardly stumbled toward her wheelchair and we sparked up a conversation. She told me that she was a schoolteacher from New Jersey and talked about all her children.

Entranced by her openness, I hesitantly shared my own family history, and admittedly, my monologue consisted of profuse usage of “oh wait I mean” and “like yeah!”

Surprisingly, the woman whose name I learned to be Cynthia, seemed unfazed by my unsophisticated teenage jargon, and was genuinely interested in getting to know me. I pulled a chair beside her oxygen tank and found myself chatting the day away, hours beyond my allotted volunteer shift. Before I left, she asked me to come close to her, and for a moment, she extended her arms to wrap her soft palms around my hand.

Week after week, I found myself returning to the same corner, where Cynthia always awaited my arrival. From deliberating the repercussions of political rhetoric to thoroughly analyzing my performances at cross country meets, our conversations never grew dull.

Indeed, Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie had become my Saturdays with Cynthia.

Except our story was different. 

As a teen flaunting braces representing his school colors and a Sierra Nevada of pimples above his eyebrows, I was nowhere near as wise or worldly as Albom. Yet despite the age difference, Cynthia and I connected. No adult in my life ever talked to me the way she did – not as a child or ‘junior volunteer,’ but as a real friend. We shared stories and genuine laughs. From her bed, Cynthia reached out, planting something beautiful in my heart.

Tuesdays with Morrie makes sense to me now. I understand the beauty in friendships, the unyielding gaiety in humor and the grief in loss because of Cynthia.