Karmic balances

The World Vision people are blitzing my area.
I answered the door to a very pretty south asian descent woman who was articulate and informative and took the time to point out features about children that were eligible for *sponsorship*.

Thirty five dollars a month.
That is one or two shiny things.
I would rather know a shiny face had enough to eat.

Perhaps I can think more of others and less of my own struggles.

this is a start

Scheduling ?

-*-

One of my two imminently palliative clients passed away just after I left his home.
Inquiring about the other I was told he was now receiving service BID.

Today he was on my list and with much trepidation I pulled into the driveway.
It seemed unthinkable he could have made it to today in the shape he was in.
The last visit he was still conscious but so very weak that even sipping water was a difficulty. As I left he had said to me: "That was something. You pushed me hard."

Now I am going to the door and thinking to myself: "No way."

I sneak a peak through the window and the hospital bed is gone and the living room back to normal. The wife sees me peering in and now I am committed to action.
O no!

Luckily, I am locquacious. Thankfully, I have chutzpah.
There is always something nice to say.
Ok I said nice things. It was regrettable that I was sent there in error but perhaps it was a divine moment. A divine appointment.

Some little thing I said touched that woman and as I left she called me back for a close embrace and through tears thanked me (again).
..

..........0

An Echo and a Ripple

This last week I had the privilege to attend to a gentleman in his last days.
He is always an interesting man as he has kept his desire to interact even in these end times. I met him only a short few weeks ago when things were not going very well.
Thanks to good advice and better follow-up things are much better.

This day I come, he is bed-ridden in the living room. It is a good thing and he looks comfortable, although paler and thinner and I do not think there will be a next week for him. I give him a sip of water before he start to change things for him.

The woman floating in and out of the living room is familiar to me but I cannot quite get it. She was in the room a few weeks ago when I was here although I do not think that is where the memory is.

Just as I am finishing up, he looks up and says very loudly: "SHIT"

Well, by golly, it was not an expletive it was a descriptive.
I laughed out loud and he started singing: "Brown stuff brown stuff..

All right, perhaps a bit graphic for you or morbid but it was cute and funny and even his wife, usually so uptight laughed too.

So we cleaned up... again.

As I finished I was telling the wife she did not have to clean up for me... I can do it. But she did. The other familiar woman came over and said to me:
"I could never do your job. I don't know how you can do it and stay so calm and relaxed."

"Oh, you never know," I said, "I used to live in the big city and had a much different job until my own mother became terminally ill and I came here...

I looked at her.

"THATS WHERE I KNOW YOU FROM!""

She said to me: "You seem so familiar to me."

We took a hospice course together. All those years ago.
That course was the defining factor in my retraining.
Once I took it I knew I wanted to pursue palliative care.
For her, it was the other way. Once she took it she knew she had to move on.

I remember her well as her husband had early onset Alzheimers.
They were both active dynamic people. He was a health food, hiker,runner, holistic sort of fellow and it was a shock when he became unwell.

He was dead at 42.

So this is an echo and a ripple.
She looked great. She is remarried. And she is doing a very good job of helping her father in his last days.

Right on.