The Old Fisherman

A couple and their eight-year-old lived in a duplex house across the street from the entrance of a famous hospital. They lived downstairs and rented the rooms upstairs to outpatients at the clinic.?

One evening as the lady of the house was fixing dinner, there was a knock at the door. She opened it to see an unusual-looking man.

“He’s hardly taller than my eight-year-old,” she thought as she stared at the stooped, shrivelled body. The most disturbing sight was his face - lopsided from swelling, red and raw. Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, “Good evening. I’ve come to see if you have a room for just one night. I came for a treatment this morning, and there’s no bus till tomorrow morning.”

He told her that he had been hunting for a room since noon, but he had no success as no one seemed to have a vacant room. “I guess it’s my face. I know it looks terrible, but my doctor says with a few more treatments….”

For a moment, the lady hesitated, but the following words touched her heart.. “I could sleep in this rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves early in the morning.” So she told him that she would find him a bed to rest.

She went inside and finished getting dinner. When the family was ready, she asked the old man if he would join them. “No, thank you. I have plenty.” And he held up a brown paper bag that contained his food. When she had finished the dishes, she went out on the porch to talk with him for a few minutes.

It didn’t take long to see that this older man had a big heart crowded into that tiny body. He told her that he fished for a living to support his daughter, her five children, and her husband, who was hopelessly crippled from a back injury.

He didn’t tell it by way of complaint; in fact, every other sentence was prefaced with thanks to God for a blessing. He was grateful that no pain accompanied his disease, which was a form of skin cancer. He thanked God for giving him the strength to keep going.

At bedtime, the lady put a camp cot in the child’s room for him. When she got up in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded, and the little man was out on the porch.

He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus, haltingly, as if asking a great favour, he asked the lady, “Could I please come back and stay the next time I have a treatment? I won’t trouble you a bit. I can sleep fine in a chair.”

He paused a moment and then added, “Your child made me feel at home. Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don’t seem to mind.” The lady told him he was welcome to come again.

On his next trip, he arrived a little after seven in the morning. He brought a big fish and a quart of the largest oysters the woman had ever seen as a gift. He said he had shucked them that morning before he left so that they’d be nice and fresh.

From her previous conversations with the man, the lady knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m. She wondered what time he had to get up to do this for the family.

In the years he came to stay overnight with the family, there was never a time that he did not bring fish or oysters, or vegetables from his garden. Other times the family received packages in the mail, always by special delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or kale, every leaf carefully washed.

Knowing that he must walk three miles to mail these and knowing how little money he had, made the gifts even more precious for the lady and her family. When she received these little remembrances, she often thought of a comment her next-door neighbour made after he left that first morning. “Did you keep that awful-looking man last night? I turned him away! You can lose roomers by putting up such people!”

Maybe the family did lose roomers once or twice. But many times, the lady thought to herself, “If only they could have known him, perhaps their illnesses would have been easier to bear.”

The family felt grateful to have known him; from him, they learned to accept the bad without complaint and the good with gratitude.

One day, the lady was visiting a friend who had a greenhouse. As she showed her flowers, they saw the most beautiful one of all, a golden chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms. But to her great surprise, it was growing in an old, dented, rusty bucket. The lady thought to herself, “If this was my plant, I’d put it in the loveliest container I had!” But what her friend said, changed her mind.

“I ran short of pots,” she explained, “and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn’t mind starting in this old pail.”

This sentence brought up beautiful imagery in the woman’s mind. She imagined a scene in heaven, picturing the fisherman. “Here’s a wonderful one,” God might have said when he came to the soul of the sweet old fisherman. “He won’t mind starting in this small body.”

This heart-warming story reminded me of all the times I have come across brave and inspiring people facing adversity, be it through conversations for my book The Tenth Story, or otherwise.

I have often wondered about the kind of attitude that helps people face adversities gracefully and constructively. My observations thus far have been that there are three things in their approach: an attitude of gratitude, high ownership towards what is theirs to do, and faith that a better future awaits them.

I would love to hear your reflections on the story. Did this story remind you of someone inspiring who you may have met in your life? What about their attitude inspired you?

Source of the story: All Time Short Stories