Evie: A Lesson in Seeing Beyond Appearances

She had a mop of curly salt and pepper hair, and the most beautiful blue eyes I think I have ever seen. They were behind very thick glasses that looked to be optical prisms. She was a precursor to today’s Social Justice Warriors who think everyone should hold the same opinions as they do, and who broadcast those opinions aloud every chance that they get. Her voice sounded like fingernails on a chalk board to me. It was incredibly nasally. When she called on the phone she never said “Hello”, or “Hello, this is Evie.” She just launched into a rant about whatever it was that she was agitated about at the particular moment. Our children came to call her, “the rude lady”, because of her interpersonal habits, both on the phone and in person. I didn’t like this woman. The whole town spoke of an incident that took place before we had moved to Pittsfield, in which she seemingly called everyone in town, one by one, in the middle of the night, and announced to them all, “They found the body!” and then hung up. People laughed when they discovered which church I was serving. They’d say, “It must be interesting having Evie in your congregation!”

Because I didn’t like her I was dismissive of the things she said. I paid them less attention than they deserved. Underneath that socially offensive exterior was a heart that cared deeply about others, but it would take me years to realize that. There were a number of times when an elderly person was in difficulty in his or her home, and all alone, and might well have died had no one come to check.

Repeatedly it was Evie’s vigilance over the wellbeing of our congregation which sent me out to check, and to discover that the person in question genuinely needed help. Given that the congregation was very elderly in those days, her alerts sometimes came too late, and the person I went to check on had passed.

Once, I went and discovered an elderly woman named Opal who had been trapped in her bathtub for a long time, haven fallen when taking a shower, and unable to get up. Oddly, she was wearing wool socks and nothing else. Wanda, a nurse from our congregation and the head of our Trustee board, came with me on that call. I was thankful to have a lady with me at that time. Opal was very cold, and was unsure of how long she’d lain there, as her short term memory was failing. Had it not been for Evie, she would have lain there for at least another 24 hours.

​Another time a parishioner who had one of her legs amputated due to complications with her diabetes, and who chose to live alone, forgot that she was missing that leg, and tried to get up and walk in the night. She was trapped on the floor of her bedroom. We had tried to encourage her to purchase a Lifeline alert system, but she was unwilling. If Evie hadn’t been calling to check on her, Ethel might possibly have died from a simple fall in her bedroom.

Evie kept an eye on the folks in her building, which was a senior housing facility. She went to check on another parishioner one morning, and found her door unlocked, and something pushing against the door so she couldn’t get it open. She called me and was in a panic because she couldn’t get her friend Iva to reply. I was at first resentful of the call, but when I went over and pushed against the door, I realized that Iva was pressed up against it. I gently and steadily pushed against the door until it opened, and then saw that Iva was dead. She was cold to the touch and had no carotid pulse.

Over the years I’d seen a number of our parishioners who had died, but I had never seen Evie weep before. As she looked at her friend’s body, her whole body shook, and she held her hand up to her mouth. I came to realize, at that time, how deeply she loved and cared for these people whom she watched over. They themselves sometimes resented her constant checking and accused her of being a busybody, though not to her face, but I realized that she was like a shepherd checking on her flock. Her manner might be a bit off putting, but here was a deeply caring person.

As I dealt with other families both within and outside of the church I heard stories that confirmed this. People told me of what she was like as a young woman when she was raising her own children. She was as vigilant over the children in her part of town as she now was over the elderly. She had always been poor, having lost her husband, and trying to raise two children on her own in rural Maine. Nevertheless, there was always room at Evie’s table for neglected children. She might not have the money to purchase the clothing and other needs which they had, but with her abrasive and persistent manner she would go after those who did. She secured the funds needed for poor people to get by with her petitioning of those who had the means to help. They didn’t love her for it, but that did not dissuade her.

Slowly I came to love Evie. She was a difficult person to understand, but she was not as rude and self-consumed as I had previously thought. In reality, she was a very devoted woman. Her voice and her manner were grating, but she was a decent and caring human being. She had a very strong sense of community, and she was always willing to do what she could to help out. Here was a Good Samaritan disguised as an abrasive busybody.

As Evie increased in years she got a little muddled in her perceptions. Our congregation always put on receptions for the families of those who had died, and our ladies would prepare finger sandwiches and desserts for these occasions. Evie was past the time when she could help with all of the kitchen work, but she wanted to contribute to a particular funeral, so she brought some fairly awful looking cupcakes. I saw her bring them in and set them down.

If you know what Drake’s Sunny Doodles looked like, they looked like very sad Sunny Doodles. All the food around them was being eaten, but no one was touching Evie’s cupcakes. I started feeling offended for her. I didn’t want her to feel as though she had made them for nothing, so I went and took one to have with my coffee. As I put it to my nose, I smelled a strong smell of moth balls. That didn’t worry me, as many of our elderly parishioners’ homes often had a smell of moth balls. I just assumed they’d picked up the smell from Evie’s house. As I bit into the cupcake alarm bells went off in my head. It tasted like moth balls. I thought I must be mad. I went to the kitchen and discretely spit it into a napkin and threw it away. I then asked my friend Nancy to check on that plate of cupcakes. She went and fetched it into the kitchen. All the ladies in the kitchen wrinkled up their noses at the smell. Nancy broke one open and indeed, it did smell quite strongly of moth balls. What our women eventually concluded was that Evie must have confused moth ball flakes with coconut. Keeping an eye on Evie out in the dining room, to make sure she didn’t see it, they threw the moth ball cupcakes out in the trash. Meanwhile I was on the phone with poison control. They asked how much I had ingested and said that there was nothing to worry about. I might have some gastric disturbances from my cupcake, but that would be the extent of my problems.

Evie is gone now, and, to tell the truth, I don’t miss some of her less endearing mannerisms, but I do miss her. I miss that voice, those beautiful blue eyes, that mop of hair, and that impulsive voice that would break in upon the quiet of a worship service to tell of a the practical needs of someone in our community, and to call us to help them. Evie had a heart of gold encased in an exterior of sandpaper.

Note from Bill: So often we think our surface level assessments of the people in our church

bodies are accurate. Sometimes, if we take the time to hear their stories, and really get to know

them at a deeper level, we discover that there is much that is precious and praiseworthy in those who can otherwise come across as off-putting in their mannerisms and behaviors. Christ loves these difficult sheep (John 21:16), and he calls us to love them too.