When I first arrived at the care facility, I was afraid. I knew I didn’t and couldn’t understand the weight of what I was about to experience. My first patient was an older woman in the memory care unit. At first, I noticed she shied away from speaking, meeting me overly cheerful “hello” with a small smile. Then I noticed she refrained from anything but small movements with her arms. I didn’t know how to interact with her. I was petrified of disturbing her static comfort and bothering her quiet peace. Do I interrupt the movie the residents watched to pull her aside to talk? What do I talk to her about? How do I interpret the smiles and winks and arm movements she shows me?
I asked for advice and was told to do what I felt was best. So, I began the learning curve. She was more than a patient for whom I could follow any list of conversation topics or scripts; she was a person with a gallery of experiences and personality features I didn’t yet know. I started to recognize the power of normal conversations and honestly, the influence of just showing up. I still visit with this patient. Yet as I acknowledge that her ability to speak and gesture is increasingly diminished, I find I know more and more about her personality. I know the residents she smiles around and even those that annoy her. I know her affinity for purses and colorful sweaters. It seems to me, now, that there is only so deeply you can know someone by facts. I don’t know my patient’s family situation beyond that she sometimes wears a stone ring on her left hand. I don’t know her occupation or where she was raised. There are years and years of facts and experiences I won’t know from her or from her file. Yet, I know her in a way that allows me to connect with her, nonetheless.
When I started volunteering, I was convinced that I had compartmentalized the experience. It scared me, I felt calloused that I could visit with a patient one minute and the next be in the library focused on my assignment. I still have that ability: to be present with any activity I am doing. But what I realized over time was that the experience was changing me as a person. I could let go of small things, I could sleep at night despite any stressful exam, I could let go of a turbulent friendship. I slowly gained perspective. One of my patients once told me, “You don’t want to get old.” I realized that, in the silence that followed, we both knew I would betray that advice and do just that. His advice wasn’t intended for me to avoid that reality, but to think about it. And I did, for the first time I stopped smiling and thought. Death became more than the scary topic people softly spoke about; it was a reality that I confronted every week. Even more so a death that is pained, early, or filled with regret became, for the first time, a tangible concept. I’ve become a person that thinks far more consciously about their choices, their happiness, the quality of person they are over the facts that currently define them. More so, I’ve lost some of naivety that led me to meet my first patient with such nervousness. I’ve learned how to play one of many roles to help those in hospice and how to navigate the many influences the same patients have on me.