Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul Read Online Free PDF

healing?”
    I said, “I think pretty well. I wash around it gently each day.” The memory of the shower water hitting my numb chest flashed across my face.
    She gently reached over and ran her hand across the scar, examining the smoothness of the healing skin and looking for any irregularities. I began to cry gently and quietly. She brought her warm eyes to mine and said, “You haven’t touched it yet, have you?” And I said, “No.”
    So this wonderful, warm woman laid the palm of her golden brown hand on my pale chest and she gently held it there. For a long time. I continued to cry quietly. In soft tones she said, “This is part of your body. This is you. It’s okay to touch it.” But I couldn’t. So she touched it for me. The scar. The healing wound. And beneath it, she touched my heart.
    Then Ramona said, “I’ll hold your hand while you touch it.” So she placed her hand next to mine, and we both were quiet. That was the gift that Ramona gave me.
    That night as I lay down to sleep, I gently placed my hand on my chest and I left it there until I dozed off. I knew I wasn’t alone. We were all in bed together, metaphorically speaking, my breast, my chest, Ramona’s gift and me.
    Betty Aboussie Ellis

“Are You God?”
    One cold evening during the holiday season, a little boy about six or seven was standing out in front of a store window. The little child had no shoes and his clothes were mere rags. A young woman passing by saw the little boy and could read the longing in his pale blue eyes. She took the child by the hand and led him into the store. There she bought him some new shoes and a complete suit of warm clothing.
    They came back outside into the street and the woman said to the child, “Now you can go home and have a very happy holiday.”
    The little boy looked up at her and asked, “Are you God, Ma’am?”
    She smiled down at him and replied, “No son, I’m just one of His children.”
    The little boy then said, “I knew you had to be some relation.”
    Dan Clark

The Electric Candlesticks
    Once a month on a Friday morning, I take a turn at the local hospital delivering Sabbath candlesticks to the Jewish female patients registered there. Lighting candles is the traditional way that Jewish women welcome the Sabbath, but hospital regulations don’t allow patients to light real candles. So we offer the next best thing—electric candlesticks that plug in and are turned on at the start of the Jewish Sabbath on Friday at sundown. The Sabbath is over Saturday night. Sunday morning, I retrieve the candlesticks and store them away until the following Friday, when another volunteer comes to distribute them to that week’s group of patients. Sometimes I see the same patients from the previous week.
    One Friday morning, as I was making my rounds, I encountered a woman who was very old—perhaps 90. She had short snow-white hair that looked soft and fluffy, like cotton. Her skin was yellow and wrinkled, as if her bones had suddenly shrunk and left the skin around them with nothing to support it and nowhere to go; now it just hung in soft folds on her arms and face. She looked small there in the bed with the blanket pulled up under her arms. Her hands, resting on top of the cover, were gnarled and worn, the hands of experience. But her eyes were clear and blue, and her voice was surprisingly strong as she greeted me. From the list that the hospital had given me, I knew her name was Sarah Cohen.
    She told me that she had been expecting me, that she never missed lighting candles at home and that I should just plug them in by the side of the bed where she could reach them. It was obvious that she was familiar with the routine.
    I did as she asked and wished her a good Sabbath. As I turned to leave, she said, “I hope my grandchildren get here in time to say good-bye to me.”
    I think my face must have registered my shock at her matter-of-fact statement that she knew she was dying, but I touched her hand