What is "charm"?

Reflecting on what that old-world Hungarian doctor said the other night about my being "charming" got me thinking.  Is "charm" the ability to be friendly and amiable when you really couldn't give a damn?  That is me.  I can turn it on in a heartbeat.  But what is "charm"? 

The dictionary defines it thusly:  "A power or gift of alluring, pleasing or exciting, to enchant, to fascinate, to bewitch, to attract, to delight, to please, to fascinate..........".  I have to confess, I can be "charming" but I turn it on deliberately.  The real "me" is anything but.  I am solitary and insular, in spite of the fact that I can appear to be vivacious and friendly when required.  I once described myself as being a "sincere phony" and that about sums it up. 

This I attribute to my late mother who admonished me from a very young age to..."speak to a person".  This was a direct order.  Wherever we went, I was expected to talk to, and engage, anyone gathered in any room into which she brought me.  Age or social station did not matter.  I had to "perform".  And when I say "from a very young age", I am talking three or four.  Today I am grateful for the discipline upon which she insisted, but as a toddler it was at times daunting. 

For her, "speaking to a person" was simply a matter of good manners.  Who has those anymore?  Who has a clue about the art of conversation?  Who stands up when a lady enters the room?  Who stands up when a lady excuses herself from the table?  Who stands up when she returns?  Who takes his hat off in an elevator when ladies are present?  Who holds a chair?  Who holds a door?  It's all so depressingly tedious.

But back to "charm".  For a number of years I served every Sunday morning as a pastoral care worker at the Civic Hospital, where I brought Communion to Catholics...until I contracted pneumonia and nearly died, at which time I had to stop.  I absolutely loved the work!  Each week I visited about 25 sick or dying patients over the space of about two hours and gave them Communion.  My gift was "charm".  I was able to enter a room and immediately connect with each patient in a very real way.  Many were dying and the gift of the Eucharist was huge for them.  But the reason I could do it week in and week out was because the minute I left the room, I left them behind.  I dropped them.  Not that I was not sincerely moved while I was with them, I was, and often wept with them and their families, but I did not take it past the transom.  I did not take the emotion home.  I used to read the obituaries and see that often the people I had visited had died shortly after I had left them. 

The fact that I did this work was simply God's mischevious handiwork because he tapped a regular, run-of-the-mill sinner such as I to relate to the people I was visiting.  And believe me, God was running the show.  I had so many inexplicable moments.  One woman I saw regularly was suddenly not there one Sunday.  "Where is Kay?" I asked at the desk.  "Oh, she has gone to the Maycourt Hospice."  Great, I thought, she had wanted to die there.  Over the next few Sunday's she was not on my computer list and I thought no more about her.  Until one day when she flashed into my mind as I was leaving G ward (the cancer ward).  I turned and walked back to the desk.  "Where is Kay"? I asked again.  "Oh, she's back, she was too sick and they had to bring her back yesterday," the nurse told me.  She was not on my list.  Why did Kay come to me?  I went into her room and she was so happy to see me with the Eucharist.  I gave her Communion and she died a few hours later.  How does that happen?  We all know how.

One of the saddest visits I had in G ward was to a young mother, dying of cancer.  She was unconscious, but her two toddler daughters were crawling all over her, hugging and kissing her.  It was absolutely heartbreaking.  But I walked out and left it behind.  She died that day.       

It helps that I have a robust sense of humour and do not take myself seriously.  These are gifts I cherish.  They helped me so much to deal with the dying people I met over several years.  To get someone to laugh just before they die is quite something.  But I would walk out of the room and never give them a second thought.  Otherwise, how could I have done the work?

What is "charm"?  I still don't really know.