God’s work

Kayla Davis, 8, gives Margaret Bass a kiss. Kayla is the granddaughter of home care provider Cheryl Jones.

Ask anyone who’s worked in home care: There aren’t many like Jones.

When her mother died in the hospital in 2004, it was the greatest disappointment in her life that she had missed out on what she calls the privilege of caring for her at home.

Jones tried to make up for it by tending to Hazel Hall, a retired spinster teacher who lived down the street. It was Hall, in fact, who encouraged Jones to re-enroll in nursing school part time a few years ago. She’s on target to graduate at the same time her 15-year-old son, Nelson, graduates from William Fleming High School.

Even with her decades of experience, Jones earns just slightly more than the national rate of $9.20 per hour. She also receives mileage reimbursement and health insurance — a rarity in the field. But she will more than triple her salary when she becomes a registered nurse.

Therein lies the heart of the worker-retention problem, home care advocates say: To make a living wage, the ones who want to advance often leave the field. Those who stick with it routinely switch companies, if only to make a quarter an hour more.

But Jones will miss the work she believes God has called her to do — helping the sick and the frail to live and die, with dignity, in their homes:

The prominent Roanoker who, in the throes of dementia, called her in a panic at 3 a.m.: “Cheryl, I can’t find my underwear.”

The morbidly obese woman who spent the last 10 years of her life housebound. To move around her house, she literally had to crawl on the floor. (“She was my baby.”)

The woman who couldn’t afford cleaning supplies. (“I had to put her denture tablets in her toilet and scour her sink with little balls of tinfoil.”)

And even Mimi, the woman from 20 years ago, whose opening remark to Jones was: “All I ever knew of black people to do was clean up and cook for you.”

Widowed and childless, the woman did not believe in God, Jones recalled. And she hadn’t known it was possible to befriend a black person.

But Jones helped move her forward on both counts, tending to her at home and in the hospital.

As she took her final breaths, Jones held her hand, prayed with her and whispered: “I’m here for you. It’s all right. I’m not going anywhere.”