a new venture in my life. and career.
i never thought i'd be strong enough. i never thought i could face it. i never thought i could help anyone through a situation that i cannot even admit that i am "over" in my own life. i am a hospice social worker. i help people and their families through the "dying process." i have been there at the last breath. i have watched the body. and i think every day, this is what my pop went through. i am the one who visited with him. the nurses i now know, eased his pain. it is as if, in a roundabout way, i am comforting my own family. and myself.
is this too attached? some may ask. as my social worker self a month ago, i would have said yes. absolutely. we're not supposed to get attached. we're not supposed to get too personal. we're not supposed to cry with patients. that's just too much. that's not what you do as a social worker. i have learned differently. as a social worker, we are what our clients need us to be. period. if a client needs me to be a listening ear. i do that. if they need me to help with bills. yea, i call someone to do that. if they need me to be family and cry with them when no one else will-- because they're dying and they're scared. you bet i do that. this is social work. redefined to me.
this training has not, in any way, been easy, but i feel humbled and honored that i have this opportunity. to share with an individual and families in such a personal and debilitating time-- just to say, i am here. it's enough. it is so enough.
an amazing, beyond words, day in my career happened today. i sat with a middle-aged woman with breast cancer that is so prominent i can see it through her thin, wasting body. we talked about her garden, and the beautiful tomatoes she has produced. we talked about her pain. we talked about her loving husband that will lose his second wife to cancer. we talked about music. she has a plethora of instruments in her beautiful, better homes and gardens-type living room. who is the musician? i asked. i used to be. she stated. do you play? nervously, i said yes, i played for years. i practice very little now, i told her. please play for me, she asked. without thinking, i picked up a hymnal and began to play. i have always been nervous performing for people. i have always played by myself, to myself. but today, she needed me. she needed the music. i played for almost an hour. her eyes closed during be thou my vision. tears streamed down her face in what a friend we have in jesus. she picked up her harp and played along to another familiar tune. today, the music was her medicine. and it was our healing. as i am learning this job, i can say this is exactly my place; this is my purpose at this point in my career and my life; this is my giving back for my pop.
i don't know if she will be alive tomorrow when i go to work. i never know. i do know that today was a wonderful day for her. and me. if you have never engaged with the dying, know that as the body and the mind get very weak and they fade-- those with dementia, those in imminent death. they still sing. they still play. the music does not leave. somehow it is forever there. written on the heart.
