While walking along Terry Street, I noticed a woman in a manual wheelchair a half-block ahead. She was struggling to cross at the intersection with Madison on Seattle’s First Hill. It’s a tricky spot to navigate even on foot: heavy vehicle traffic frequently backs up, blocking crosswalks; bus lanes and a boarding island command the middle of the street. There’s a crosswalk, but no pedestrian signal where she was trying to cross. Add to that the force of gravity resisting her attempts to push against the hill’s incline.

As I got closer, either she or the chair figured out that she needed to swivel, adding leverage as she pushed the chair backward. It still wasn’t easy, and with every push she moaned loudly. Push. Moan. Push. Moan. By the time I reached the intersection she was nearly to the curb, across the street from me. I could see she was very thin, long hair covering her face as she leaned forward to push. The chair was enormous, absolutely inappropriate for her size.

I was headed home after playing piano for that evening’s free dinner at St. James’ “Cathedral Kitchen.” I’m always emotionally floating after this gig. The kitchen serves upwards of two hundred people each night, many of them down-and-out. The music I and fellow pianists provide softens the atmosphere, makes the huge hall more welcoming, less institutional. Best of all, I get to meet people outside of my comfortable retirement community bubble.

I wondered if the woman in the wheelchair had been among our guests that evening. I was relieved when she reached the curb, both for her and for me. I would’ve impulsively run out to push (or pull) the chair, but she was safe, at least momentarily. I intuited that her needs were far greater than merely crossing the street. Far greater than I could or maybe should try to address.

Many decades ago, as I was driving off the ferry onto Vashon Island, I noticed a fellow in a wheelchair at the end of the dock, his thumb extended for a ride. Public transportation was scant on the island. Hitchhiking was necessary and acceptable. In that post-Vietnam era, young men in wheelchairs were frequently veterans.

I stopped, he adroitly disassembled his chair and stashed it in the back of my VW bug. What ensued was a marathon of visits all over the island to various “friends” who firmly declined to invite him in. It finally ended when I agreed to buy him a large can of beer and drop him at the beach where he would “drink in” the afternoon sunshine. When I told a friend this story, she said, “Oh, HIM!” She and her husband had been conned into a similar venture. Weeks later I read in the island newspaper that he’d been arrested at the tavern after throwing his metal footrest at a fellow patron.

I bring this episode up not as an excuse for failing to offer help. The event at Madison and Terry occurred just before All Saints Day. To be declared a saint, the institutional church requires that holy people must have performed a miracle. Define “miracle.” I think about well-known saints (official and not) like Francis, Gandhi, Theresa, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela. I think about anonymous saints, people who donate a kidney to a stranger, or people who spend their nights assisting our destitute neighbors on the streets. They all have one miracle in common: their willingness to be vulnerable.

Increased vulnerability is a reality of aging, and I don’t like it. As an older if not wiser woman, I fear vulnerability more than I fear death. I suspect I’m not alone. Tradition tells us that St. Francis’ final words before his death were: “I have done what was mine to do; may the Lord show you what is yours.” I listen for that quiet voice inside that does not speak in words but tells me what is mine, and maybe more important, what is not mine to do.

I believe that the Giver of Life forgives my fear of vulnerability. I know that what’s “mine to do” is to keep in my consciousness the woman struggling in the wheelchair, to remember her, just as I continue to remember the wheelchair “vet” whose injuries were far greater and deeper than paraplegia. To remember my human connection with them when I vote, when I decide how much and where to donate money and time. They and others will continue to remind me of the African wisdom of Ubuntu: “I am because you are.”

We struggle these days with the ramifications of AI and our future as humans. AI may be able to tell me how to improve this bit of writing, but it can never touch my heart, never connect with my humanity and humility. Never become a non-erasable memory like a frail woman in an oversized wheelchair did.