More than 40 years ago I was going to New York on a very low-budget trip with a friend. I told my aunt about it, and she said ‘I know someone in New York, you must get in touch with her.’ This surprised me, as Auntie May had scarcely been out of the British Isles, had certainly never been to the USA. ‘Oh I’ve never met her’ she went on. ‘But she will want to hear from you.’

What had happened was this: her son Kevin (my cousin) was a medical student in London, and became friendly with an American boy, Matty, who was a fan of English football. Kevin brought him up to Liverpool to stay with his Mum so they could attend a football match together. But Matty became ill during the visit, and ended up in hospital, and my cousin had to return to London for his studies. So my Auntie May took on looking after this virtual stranger: she made sure he had what he needed, and she travelled - by bus - to be his only visitor in hospital. She talked on the phone to Matty’s Mom in New York (a very big, and expensive, deal back then) to reassure her. When he was discharged, she took him back to her house until he was OK to travel back to London. ‘Well of course I did’ she said about all this – ‘the poor boy was alone.’ Matty (who died in 2020) and Kevin both went on to distinguished careers as doctors.

And - the main beneficiaries of this story were me and my friend. When I hesitantly contacted Matty’s Mom in New York, she couldn’t do enough for us: insisted on taking us both out for a very fancy meal in an expensive restaurant. We were nickel-and-diming it, so this was a huge treat. She bought us more food to take back to our miserable hotel room, paid for us to visit the Empire State Building, phoned us on our last day as she was worried we might have run out of money and she wanted to ‘lend’ us some.

I have tried to do the same for any young visitors who come my way, but I didn’t truly understand this story till I had children of my own, and realized how she must have felt about my kindly aunt, and why she wanted to make some return. If your child is ill on the other side of the world, can you hope for care like that? Two women, thousands of miles apart, who never met, but who understood each other totally. They were both solid Christians (which of course is not essential for goodness) and they wouldn’t have put themselves in the Gospel – far too humble – but I think of them both when I read in Matthew 25: ‘I was hungry and you gave me something to eat…I was a stranger and you invited me in,  I was sick and you looked after me… whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Moira Redmond