Here is a brief synopsis. Visit of Charity is a tale of ignorance, aging, and the cyclical nature of life as a woman relives the very experience she dreaded as a child. In the beginning of the story we meet Marian, an elderly woman, being dropped off at an assisted living facility. As she nears the end, her family decides it is best to leave in the in the care of “professionals.” As Marian tries to make it through this experience we flashback with her to a simpler time in her youth. Young Marian is a campfire girl in the 1930’s, and in desperate need of her community service badge to be the best in her troop. She decides to visit a home for the elderly and the experience turns out to be more than she can bear. Marian visits the home and finds a run down, decrepit, shell of a building, and the same can be said for the nursing staff that takes no particular joy in their work. Marian is brought to the tiny cramped room of the affable Gabrielle and the reclusive and boorish Addie. They are elderly women; shut ins, lonely and desperate for company. To them Marian is more than a visitor, she is their little girl. Gabrielle, desperate to have Marian stay, fusses and dotes on her as Addie tries to push her away. Marian is overwhelmed by the experience; it is too much for such a young child as each woman lets her into her own fears and insecurities culminating in a wish for death that young Marian cannot grant. She flees that place hoping never to return, and yet sixty short years later she sits, alone in her room on the bed watching her family leave her and waiting for anyone to visit.
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