Mar
12
I had a nice afternoon doing a different sort of volunteer work yesterday. I thought I’d take a little time before accepting a new hospice patient, and offered to help with office tasks for a while. I came in one day last week to sort of get the gist of what was needed, and yesterday was the first day of doing any official sort of work.
Confession, I was NOT looking forward to this! On the day I’d been there before I felt like the environment was too … low energy, maybe. It’s a big nice building with a corporate setup — offices and meeting rooms that line an interior maze of cubicles. Not a ton of people working in there, the usual fluorescent vibe, maybe a lingering feeling of not-great-Bob because the parent company, a large multi-state healthcare system that’s gone though a lot of layoffs and has become kind of largely disliked locally, has really impacted the hospice team with cuts. Also, the work I’d done that day mostly consisted of struggling to master the computer setup and laboriously typing up a self-eval form for fellow volunteers.
So I wasn’t going in there thinking it would be a rewarding sort of day, you know? But it was! First of all, the more time I spent in there, the more it felt alive. I was there for a longer stint so I’m sure I just saw more people coming and going. I also could appreciate how even in this extremely corporate feeling place there are all these touches specific to hospice that make it feel homier when you take notice of them.
I also got to work with another volunteer for a lot of the time, a very nice older woman who got me up to speed and also made me very envious of her hair: thick, snow-white, and cut into a chic bob. (How do some women keep such great hair all through life, me and my four strands of Minoxidil-resistant hair would like to know.) It was just nice to have an IRL co-worker type of experience! It’s been a very very long time.
The work we were doing was transferring a bunch of information about patients from the computer database to a paper form (this part drove me nuts, so much room for human error, but that’s the system) which would then be used for calling the patiet’s person of contact and offering volunteer visitor services. She made a couple calls with me there so I could see how it goes, and then I took over when she left.
I made a LOT of phone calls, so first of all, let’s hear it for the phone phobic weirdo. Now it’s true that many of them went to voicemail, but I did get through to quite a few people. I felt a little stumbly at first but it was immediately apparent that these were special conversations that felt a little … gosh. Sacred, is the word I want to use.
I was calling people who had someone beloved in their life that is actively dying. Some people weren’t sure what a volunteer visitor does, so I could explain that, and most were pleased to say yes. A couple people said no thanks, their person was far enough along in the process they felt it might just be confusing/upsetting. If they do say yes the next task is to try and get some basic personal info about their person, what they liked in life, their hobbies or what they did for work. One lady said her husband loved the arts, and gardening, and he absolutely wanted nothing to do with sports, and we laughed about that. I said, “You had me at no sports!” and she was kind of delighted to talk about him a bit.
Everyone who says yes gets put on a waiting list, so there’s an additional step before they get someone assigned to them. This part has me strongly reconsidering my choice to take a break on patients: I see the need firsthand.
Marty would have been so happy to have me come visit him every single day. I know not everyone is in his position, being a fairly lucid person in a memory care unit, but he had almost no one to talk with aside from staff. I feel such an ache for older people who have lost so much about how they used to live, who have lonely existences, tucked away and seemingly forgotten by the world. Being a sick person on hospice does not automatically mean being lonely, but for the people on these lists, it very often does.
There was a group activity we did back when I was in hospice training. (Side note, this was a weeklong in-person thing at the time, but I believe it’s all online modules now. A bummer, but probably more accessible for people who can’t devote a full week to that.) I am of course hazy on the details, because my brain is basically a small crumbling piece of menopausal swiss cheese, but it involved writing things that were important to us on pieces of paper. Going to the movies, visiting family, reading books, climbing mountains, going to coffee with a friend, and so on.
We went through several rounds where we were asked to give up one of the pieces of paper, until we were left with just one, and then we had to give that one up. And listen, I’m not describing this well, but it was surprisingly emotional — imagine having to choose between reading and walking, etc. This exercise was intended to show how it can be for a dying person. Bit by bit, you lose your life. You stop being able to do the things you loved. You don’t see the people you loved. Eventually you may be just in a wheelchair, a bed. So many of the people I have visited have this one small spot that they’re in, and they cannot leave.
Someone asked me once if doing this work has made me less afraid of death, and I said yes and no. Yes in the sense that I truly see it as natural, and that what the body goes through is not gross or creepy. No in the sense that it remains the biggest mystery none of us can understand, and no in the sense that I know we often can’t control how the end of life stage goes and sometimes it just fucking sucks.
It’s scary to think about end of life for all of us, really. For those who don’t have the resources for care, and that will be SO MANY OF US, how’s it going to be? I personally hope it doesn’t come to that for me. Like, don’t take me too soon, Universe, but don’t keep me around too long either.
(We don’t get to pick. I remember sweet Olive, the first lady I saw, and how gently, sadly baffled she was that she was still alive. Everyone around her had died, and she could not understand why God kept her.)
Wow has this depressed anyone yet? Okay, all to say I really did have a lovely day yesterday, a little intense but it felt good to feel useful. Today I get to see Little Joe, and tomorrow I’m helping a different organization that works with kids. Life continues, at least for now.
Mar
7
A couple updates on my last post: first of all, I did end up receiving a very kind rejection message from the hiring person regarding the job I applied for. So perhaps I should be a tiny bit more patient about the application process, although I went back and looked and it had been 3 weeks, which seems like a long enough time to figure I had been round-filed without notice. Anyway, some mildly deflating closure on that little mystery.
Also, I need to stop saying things like “I think I’m through the big ups and downs of this whole giant life upheaval business!” Like, who is the jackass who keeps writing shit like this in her crumbling fossil of a WEBLOG, it is simply begging the universe to deliver a full-bodied crying jag and reconsideration of every decision I have ever made. The fact of the matter is that it’s both untrue and unreasonable to be all done with feeling big feelings lol!! I might wish otherwise, but I am very much still in the murky midst of things, as opposed to being high and dry on some emotionally-neutral other side.
Some aspects of being divorced have become easier, though. Referring to the ex as the ex, for instance. At first that felt like such a foreign, inappropriate word. Now it comes out of my mouth without a flinch. He feels like an ex, the person I was once married to. He has, in fact, excommunicated me. Maybe someday we’ll be on better terms and the ex part will carry less weight, it will simply be an objective fact. For now though, ex seems just right, stated as third person. The ex, not my ex. A giant X over me, his family, the house I used to live in, my beloved pets. I didn’t think it would be like this, but it is. And so: ex. My ex-life.
It’s easier to tell people, on the occasion that I meet someone new and have to explain my existence. At first it felt too intimate somehow, like I was letting someone have a real good look at a fresh wound and having to be like, Oh no it’s fine! Sure the bone is sticking out and blood is gushing everywhere in scary arterial spurts but that’s okay!! Now it just feels like a fact of me, like having brown eyes and three tattoos and preferring whole milk to skim. Also I am divorced, and I live alone.
Well not all by myself, of course. There is Billy! I love him dearly and also he has reached some terrible teenage phase of kittendom where everything in the house is up for grabs in his weirdly dexterous poop-rake paws. I thought he had outgrown the most destructive stage but what he was actually doing was waiting until my guard was down before deploying a new, more athletic approach to destroying everything I own. Things that were previously ignored that have now succumbed to Billy’s curiosity: the towels in the hall bathroom, my framed Lisa Hanawalt print, three different lamps, my vintage butter dish that I loved SO MUCH. (I found a replacement on Etsy and paid 55!! US dollars for it, jesus H.)
You cannot really scold him, either. He’s just a baby!!, for one, and also he has this hilarious and utterly unrepentant reaction when he’s caught, he pretty much turns his head upside down like an owl and waggles around like what? what? He’s just such a goddamned clown.
He is about 13 lb now, smaller than his same-age litter mates. He snuggles with me in bed every night until he wakes up and starts biting my toes, at which point he gets ejected. He howls pathetically outside the door every morning, a gargling sort of caterwaul: glglglglglMEOWWWWW. Then when I get frustrated and yell BILLY! STOP! There’s this pause and then a small high-pitched very cute sound…. Prrrrt? Then back to the gargle-yell.
He is my constant companion at home, a loving presence and also a maniacal agent of chaos. It’s hard to imagine wanting to live with anyone else! It’s hard to imagine sharing a home again, at this point. I suppose that may very well change. But let me tell you, there is so much to delight in. I haven’t lived on my own since 1999 and it is such a luxury. I don’t wish divorce on anyone but I do wish every woman who has done her time with raising a family and being in a long marriage could somehow experience this. A life free of compromise and other people’s feelings. Sure, you may have to replace a towel or two, but oh my god the peace. The rediscovery. The ability to do whatever you want, whenever you want.
Except if what you want is to have a single lighting source that goes unmolested, then maybe don’t get a kitten.
The defendant pleads innocent, your honor.
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