“I can love you as a Christian.”

In 1916, my grandparents Cyrus and Ethel Dawsey accepted a missionary appointment to the city of Birigui in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. My father, Cyrus Jr., was born there in 1921. Among the family’s close friends were the family Figueira with their six children.

In my father’s telling, all of the Figueira girls were attractive, but especially the third child, Leonor. She married a man by the name of Barbosa who was intelligent and ambitious. He speculated on the coffee market and became wealthy. But he also unfortunately lost money. His business dealings were such that sometimes he was rich and sometimes he was poor.

Barbosa was an unbeliever who put money above all else. And Leonor suffered as his wife. She especially couldn’t stand the way Barbosa treated his own mother. During one of his rich periods, Barbosa built a beautiful house but required his mother to live in small maid’s quarters at the back of the house.

At the height of his wealth, Barbosa abandoned Leonor and their son Helio in exchange for a mistress. For a while, he continued to do well financially but not for too long. Barbosa became ill and was unable to keep up with the coffee market. Again, he lost his money. And being sick and poor, his supposed friends and his young mistress left him to die alone.

But Leonor went to see him. She entered the room where he lay in bed and said, “Barbosa, I can’t love you as a wife anymore, but I can love you as a Christian. I have come to take care of you until you die.” And she did.

(James Dawsey from memories passed down by Cyrus Dawsey, Jr.)

Mother Teresa said, “No one should die alone…Each human should die with the sight of a loving face.” And she also said, “There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is . . . not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There’s a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.”