Why I Drive for Meals on Wheels

I ring the doorbell and announce my presence. In a few moments Anita slowly shuffles around the corner with a big smile on her face. I wait patiently. After all, Anita is 99 years old, still living on her own in a neatly-kept condo. I open the screen door and hand the diminutive, white-haired woman a plastic bag containing her lunch. “I put a loaf of bread in there for you, Anita. I know you like the kind with seeds.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” she replies as she takes the bag. “I do love that bread.” Anita’s hands are full, so I close the door for her. I walk back to my car and drive to the next client’s home.

Anita is one of the fifteen clients I will serve today on my weekly Meals on Wheels route. Each Tuesday morning, I pick up prepared meals from a local senior center and drive a route in Milwaukie, Oregon, a Portland suburb, as I have for sixteen years.

I don’t know what motivates my fellow drivers to volunteer for Meals on Wheels, but I know why I drive. My father grew up during the Great Depression in a badly broken family. He told me when I was young that he would never send one of his children to bed without dinner as punishment, because he knew what it was like to be three days hungry. I was horrified at that reality: three days of hunger, in the United States! It still horrifies me. It's unacceptable.

I’ve met many nice senior citizens and people with disabilities during my stint as a Meals driver. Almost without exception, they are pleasant people who appreciate that someone is making their lives a bit easier. Having someone stop by regularly helps keep homebound people connected to others, ensures that they get at least one high-quality meal per day, and provides a quick wellness check.

Those wellness checks can be important. Cynthia didn’t answer when I rang her doorbell one day. I heard a faint voice calling from inside her apartment. She had fallen on the floor just a few feet from the door and could not get up. She was lying on her emergency call button and couldn’t reach it to summon help. Cynthia’s door was locked. I checked with a neighbor and looked for the apartment manager, but no one could open the door.

I called the Meals on Wheels coordinator, who then called 911 and also sent another driver to complete my route. I waited there until the fire engine arrived. A firefighter coaxed Cynthia to crawl toward the door and unlock it. Problem solved. Had I not just happened to stop by then to deliver a meal, poor Cynthia could have been lying there, undiscovered, for who knows how long.

People sign up for Meals on Wheels for various reasons. Most are elderly or vision-impaired and can’t readily shop for themselves. Others are recovering from surgery or an injury and need help for just a short time, like the 90-year-old woman who asked me to cut her meat for her because she had fallen and broken both arms. I’ve also had clients with severe disabilities, ranging from total blindness to stroke victims to a quadriplegic in his forties who had broken his neck in a diving accident many years earlier. It’s not always apparent what sort of disability a client has — some are psychological — but that’s not for me to judge.

A powerful motivation for becoming a volunteer driver is to imagine that a client is your own mother, your grandfather, or even yourself following a debilitating health event. Naturally, you would hope that people close to you who need assistance could get it.

Being a driver is a way of paying it forward. I estimate that I have delivered about 14,500 meals to date. I hope I never need anyone to bring food to me, but perhaps I’ve accrued a bit of a cosmic credit if it does become necessary someday.

Meals on Wheels helps people remain in their own homes longer than they might be able to otherwise, like the 96-year-old man on my route today. After my father died, my mother, then in her late seventies, lived alone in her home for another three years. I became concerned that she might not be eating properly on her own. Mom looked into Meals on Wheels, but they didn’t deliver to her area. My siblings and I eventually persuaded Mom to move into a nice independent-living apartment in a retirement facility a few miles from her house. Ironically, the food pickup site for Meals drivers was now just twenty feet outside her new apartment’s door. Oh, well.

I need to make sure each of my clients receives the right food items. Everyone receives a tray with a hot entree plus two servings of fruit, vegetables, or salad, along with a second container with some salad, fruit, or dessert. Those who have requested it receive a small carton of milk with each meal. A few people get a special meal, such as diabetic or dairy-free. Local bakeries often donate pastries or loaves of bread. Some clients want white bread, others prefer bread with seeds, and some don’t want any bread at all. It gets a bit complicated.

I can attest to the quality of the meals that our center prepares. If a client doesn’t answer the door, I notify the program coordinator so she can perform a wellness check, and I can then take the undelivered meal home myself. Often they look and smell enticing, so I have tried quite a few of them. Our kitchen does an impressive job of preparing appealing institutional meals.

Delivering meals has opened my eyes to some usually unseen aspects of the community. When you drive down the major streets in a town, it’s not obvious that just off those streets lie many apartment complexes and mobile home parks. I had no idea how many such residential clusters existed in the town of Milwaukie. I know the community much better now after driving so many roads for so long.

I’ve met many interesting folks on my route. One man of 94 had a large model of an old airplane in his condo. Being a student of military history, I recognized it as a World War II B-17G bomber. In chatting with Fred, I learned that he had been a navigator on a B-17 in Europe. Fred had been wounded in the eye with a bit of shrapnel from an antiaircraft shell on one mission. Fortunately, he recovered just fine. Another man had been a flight engineer on a Marine Corps aircraft in the Pacific theater during the war. I found it fascinating to talk with these war veterans, members of the Greatest Generation. Everyone has a story to tell, if you take the time to ask.

There is a downside to working with elderly people and those with serious health issues: sometimes they die. One year, four people on my route passed away. Sometimes it’s not unexpected, as I see a client failing from week to week. Other times, though, it comes as a surprise. One day I went to deliver a meal to Jerry, who was about 82, only to be told by his downstairs neighbor that Jerry had died the night before. The neighbor heard a thud above his kitchen, and that was that for Jerry. That’s not a bad way to go, if you ask me.

People leave the route for various other reasons too. They move in with a relative, move to a nursing home or memory care facility, or go into the hospital but don’t return to their apartment. It’s sad, because I become rather fond of seeing these people for a few moments every week. People like Dorothy, nearly 98, who is just the sweetest lady and who has to purée all of her food because of a throat problem. Dorothy looks so cute in her apron. And then there’s Albert and his tiny wife, Susie, both in their mid-90s. Albert sometimes presents the largest box of Whitman’s chocolate candies I’ve ever seen and invites me to take an “energy pill.”

Most of the oldest clients on my routes have been women. The few men who make it into their 90s in good shape — relatively spry and mentally sharp — are all skinny little guys. This observation motivates me to keep my own weight down in hope of matching their extended healthy longevity.

Delivering Meals on Wheels is not for everyone. When a new volunteer comes along, our Meals coordinator asks an experienced driver to show them the route and train them in the process. Most new drivers work out fine. I trained one young man, though, who decided prematurely that he was ready to do the job. Even though he had committed to drive a route the next week, he didn’t show up, then or ever again. That’s just rude. The clients still must eat. If a driver doesn’t show up to do the job as expected, someone else has to fill in on very short notice.

Every human being has a fundamental right to adequate nutrition. That’s why I devote a couple of hours each week to delivering nutritional meals to people who might otherwise eat poorly that day. It’s the least I can do for my neighbors.