I grew up being fed by stories of her whimsical adventures, profound revelations, and constant encouragement. “Don’t judge it,” is a phrase I heard constantly.
As a little girl, I wanted to be just like her. Now, as a confused and bright-eyed woman in her 20s, I ask her how she is who she is today.
Her name is Anita Armas, but I call her tía. She is an Ecuadorian American woman, a mother to a 15-year-old girl, a chaplain, a writer, an aunt, a sister, an adventurer, a spiritual guide to many and one of the strongest people I know.
Recently, she told me about her trip to Calcutta, India, when she was 28. There, she worked in the death and dying homes run by Mother Theresa for a little over a year. A few decades later she still remembers it clearly.
"Calcutta. It's like the size of New York," she said, "but the whole place is a slum."
The house Armas was assigned to was one of many houses that belonged to the organization. This house was a former Hindu Temple donated and converted into a place for the dead and dying. She explained that the house was open to people of all faiths and backgrounds. Mother Teresa was one to honor everyone in their process.
The people being taken care of were "picked up off the street," Armas said.
The patients had cots for hospital beds on top of concrete floors. When the patients came in, they were often emaciated; most had shaved heads to keep lice from being an issue.
"When I first walked in, it looked like a concentration camp," she said.
As a volunteer, she washed sheets, mopped floors, and cared for the patients. She explained that manual labor was just part of the job.
"I had to let go of the idea that I was so important," she said.
Armas explained that Mother Teresa believed in simplicity; therefore, there were no dishwashing machines or washing machines for clothing. Everything had to be done by hand.
"I realized my Western idea of efficiency was not necessarily the best. There was something about the manual labor, washing the sheets by hand…," Armas said.
One of her jobs was to bathe the women. Often, they carried the patients to be washed because of their weak condition. Armas recalled a memory she had with one of the dying women she cared for.
"She was being fussy about something, but I couldn't understand what because she spoke in Bengali. I soon realized that she didn't want to wear the gown she was wearing; she wanted the gown with the flowers," Armas laughed. "I realized that even though she was dying, she still had the freedom to choose that," she said.
Her daily routine consisted of morning prayer at the home where Mother Teresa resided, The Mother House, a full day of work at her assigned home, and evening prayer at The Mother House again.
"Everything Mother Teresa did was a prayer," Armas said. "And so I said, 'Okay, I'm going to mop the floor as though it is a prayer.' And that's what I did, and that's what it became."
While that was life inside the homes, life outside was just as difficult for her.
"I remember walking through the streets and seeing people bathing in sewer water, shooting up drugs, people with tumors all over their bodies, piles and piles of trash and rats everywhere. There were so many horrifying images I would just go back to my hotel room and cry," she said.
One day, however, things took a turn. Armas had been praying, asking God for guidance on where to go. She was miserable and wanted to leave. The next day, someone invited her to go to a leprosy colony. She decided to go.
As she was walking on the horrific streets of Calcutta, she explained that everything appeared to be, for lack of a better word, "ugly" and filled with people in desperation. She took a train to a place where only lepers resided. As she walked up to the entrance with massive doors, the priest she was with prefaced the visit with somewhat of a warning. Already feeling discouraged from previous days, Armas began to feel dizzy from the priest's talk.
When she walked in, however, an unexpected experience transpired.
"When I walked in, the whole place was filled with light. Kids were running around, beautiful gardens, goats, and the lepers were weaving cloth. Their faces were radiant." She explained how the irony of them weaving cloth was that many had no fingers because of leprosy.
Armas said that when she left that place, everything changed. She walked back to the same street she came from, but this time, "everyone was beautiful," she said.
"Something happened to my eyes; everyone looked beautiful the rest of the trip," Armas repeated.
Her journey in Calcutta was not what she had expected, but it changed the way she viewed her life to come.
"The spiritual journey is always about seeing," she said.