Sisters are truly a blessing to elderly community home

The Boston Herald

At 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, two women, one in her 80s, the other half her age, climbed into a maroon Dodge Ram, bowed their heads, asked for God's blessing, then headed over to New England Produce in Chelsea to beg for food. It was a raw, cold morning, and icy underfoot, the mammoth dry dock where vendors sell fruits and vegetables to grocers throughout New England, crowded with men, crates, fork lifts and oversized trucks.

The women, Little Sisters of the Poor, tiny as pencil dots against this background, stood out. Dressed in black coats and boots and their short veiled habits, they walked from vendor to vendor, collecting whatever anyone chose to give. "Good morning, Tony. How are the kids?" "Good morning, Sister. What can I help you with today?" By 10 a.m., the van was full of produce that would, with God's help, feed for a week the 100 residents at the sisters' home for the elderly in Somerville.

The only funding the home receives is from Medicaid and the sisters want it that way. They take a vow of poverty, and trust in God to provide. And He does. Through Tony and David and Sal and the countless men and women who support the sisters in so many ways.

The sisters beg at the produce market every Wednesday. And on Tuesdays, they beg at the meat market. And when they're not begging for food, they're begging for stationery or balloons or helium to fill the balloons. "We're in need of yogurt, regular yogurt," Sister Beatrice said, writing this down on a notepad she carries. "The residents said they would like that."

On weekends, the sisters go to parish churches and beg for money to fund all the things, like yogurt, that people do not give. The sisters call what they do begging, but it's more like asking, because they don't have just their hands out. They have their hearts out, too. They accept, "I'm sorry, Sister. I can't help you today," with the same grace that they accept "Just tell me what you need." For their mission is not to make people uncomfortable, but to serve and comfort the elderly poor.

Everything the sisters beg for, they give away. Their founder, Blessed Jeanne Jugan, set the standard for the order. On a winter night in 1839, she came across an elderly blind woman on the streets of France, picked her up, took her home, placed her in her own bed and nursed her back to health. To feed the woman, Jeanne Jugan begged. Now at 32 homes in North America, her followers do the same.

In Somerville, the Jeanne Jugan Residence is misnamed because it isn't a residence at all. It's a warm, welcoming home. Wonderful food smells fill the air when you walk in the door. It's immaculate. The floors shine. The windows sparkle. The curtains are crisp. The walls are bright. And the sisters and their staff are right there greeting you.

All the residents have private rooms with their own dressers and beds and bedding. There's no standard equipment, no walls all the same colors, no unbending corporate rules. One resident has a cat. Another has birds. There's linen on the tables in the small familylike dining rooms and food served hot and family style. On Wednesday, at lunch, one of the sisters passed around stuffed mushrooms she had made. "We're a family here," Sister Beatrice explained.

A family. Not a business. This isn't a job for the sisters. This is a mission of love. The 16 sisters who live at the residence cook and clean and mingle with their extended family. They talk to them, pray with them and they stay with them when they're sick and they're dying. "No one dies alone here. We support and surround them with love," said Sister Beatrice.

The Jeanne Jugan residence is not an acute care facility, nor is it a nursing home. It is simply a home where husbands and wives can live together, where the poor elderly come when they are old and have nowhere else to go and where they can stay if they get sick, and be cared for and loved. It has a chapel, a hairdresser, a barber, a library, a greenhouse, a room for arts and crafts and even a summerhouse where the residents are invited to go for vacation. It seems the good sisters have thought of everything. Or as they say, God provides. This is what the men at the produce market and the people who reach into their pockets and give so much don't get to see, the result of their generosity: bags of apples made into pies, mushrooms, cleaned and stuffed, a room full of old people smiling. Talk back to Beverly Beckham