Bob Williams was at the north Auburn TOP Foods last Friday to buy Thanksgiving fixings for himself and his wife, Catherine, when he learned that something really big was about to go down.

He knew right away that he had to be part of it.

At about 8 a.m. Saturday, Williams, 65, rolled his wheelchair over to the wind-whipped, rain-dampened portable canopies in the southwest corner of the parking lot, where the Community Big Give was about to happen. He stayed as a volunteer for the whole three hours, greeting the people who’d come to pick up the free fixings for Thanksgiving dinner.

“I love to give,” Williams said.

His doctor might have wondered what in the heck he of all people was doing out in the chilly morning air.

Williams, who suffers from severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and emphysema, has about a year to live.

“What do you when the doc comes out and says, ‘Hey, pal, you’ve got a year?’” Williams asked, his eyes swimming. “It feels so good to help people. God put me on this earth for a purpose. I’ve yet to find out what this purpose is. And when I get a chance to help people, I do it.

“…What I don’t want is to find that when I go to heaven, God sits there and looks at me and says, ‘Hey, you didn’t do what you were supposed to do down there,’” Williams added.

His ailments, which tether him to an oxygen tank 24 hours a day, seven days a week, usually deny him small pleasures like sitting and chatting with friends. But not on this chilly fall day.

“Actually, the cold helps me to breathe,” Williams wheezed.

Despite the hard knocks, said the retired heavy construction worker and Vietnam era veteran, he is grateful for what the good Lord has given him – the car his late father passed on, a roof over his head, food, a wife, a chance to do a nice turn for his neighbors.

“Have you ever had a chance to stand in line and do something like this, the feeling you get from it, the joy you get out of it?” Williams asked. “One woman didn’t get a turkey, and I was going to buy her one, and they stopped me. She was Russian, and she said, “Go, go, I don’t want it, go, you go.’ I watched people get a burden off their chests. I heard them say, ‘Now, I’ll have a meal, just look at all these potatoes, and turkey, too. I can make two meals out of that turkey for my family, and I can make two meals out of those potatoes.’”

Here he paused. Fresh tears filled his eyes.

“What hurts so much is my Thanksgiving is just for my wife and me. It hurts so bloody bad because I don’t have any other family around. My dad passed away two or three years ago. My mom passed away 15 years ago. I have children, but they don’t want anything to do with me,” Williams said without elaborating.

He said his grim diagnosis has given him a new appreciation for life.

“I want to enjoy life more. I want to get everything I can out of life,” Williams said.

As he spoke, a woman passed by with her dinner to be. She had been crying.

‘Thank you very much,” the woman said.

“I just wanted to reach out and hug her,” Williams said. “I’m a hugger. I love people. Look, look at this gentleman coming along with the big smile on his face. Ain’t he wonderful? I think it’s just great.”