some thoughts on volunteering in hospice care

Yesterday I felt so posh as I walked down Main Street in Salt Lake and into a high rise of condominiums, pushing the call button and taking the elevator up 11 stories to see a family benefiting from hospice care. The condo was about what I imagined, nicely decorated though perhaps a bit outmoded (some walls were completely covered in mirror). The lady of the house greeted me, showed me where the cranberry juice was in the fridge, and then introduced me to her husband. He, like all other hospice care patients, is terminally ill and he looked like it more than the other people I have visited with. He was lying on his bed, naked but for the brief clutched to his groin, and an aide was trying to help him get into his wheelchair for a sponge bath and a bed change. I stood by, holding the wheelchair in place as the aide lifted the man and placed him in it. For all the sagging skin, I imagine he has lost some weight due to the cancer, and his joints appeared swollen while his flaccid muscles seemed to hang from protruding bones. I could see the shape of his femur quite clearly. Yet his face held a certain dignity, and he vocalized his concerns and his desire to do as much as he could by himself.

This striking scene represented one thought in my mind: no matter what we do in life, no matter what our career is or how much money we make, we can find ourselves dependent on someone to wash our body, change our briefs, and hand over the pee bottle when needed. How is that for the end of a life?

But there's more. While I was sitting in that gentleman's bedroom, his daughter who lives nearby came over. She crawled on the bed, kissing her father's taught forehead, and asked him if he wanted something to eat, with such love effusing from her eyes that it was impossible not to smile. She returned with toast and soft-boiled eggs, which she fed to him slowly and carefully. She even shared her cigarette with him. Later, when his wife returned, the three of them were gathered together on his bed, smiling, laughing, talking about the gigantic calculator his wife had just bought (a Brookstone model--it was enormous).

The redeeming value of seeing people who are suffering and dying is seeing their loved ones gathered around them, making their last weeks/days/hours precious to them. They need one another to the very end. I have been impressed in this way each time I meet the family of the hospice patient. I see the concern and love in their interactions with their loved ones. A wife sponging the lips of her unconscious husband as he struggles to breathe. A social worker massaging a dying woman's dry hands with lotion that smells like freesia. A grandson visiting his grandfather who has large, visible tumors on top of his head. These images will stay with me forever.

As I've been able to live a little in the shoes of hospice workers, I come to believe more and more in the mission of hospice care: to help those who are dying to pass away with dignity and humanity. Once again I have been reminded that people matter, up to and even beyond their last breath. A human being is such a powerful, beautiful creation, always deserving respect. I feel so blessed to have observed and participated in the dying process of a few individuals this summer, each of whom was a unique, beautiful, valuable soul.

the faceless millions have faces

It happens when I pass by a large town or city on the freeway. It happens when I walk in large crowds. It happens when I’m at the largest waterpark in the nation, looking around at all the half-naked bodies surrounding me. It’s a feeling of awe at the amount of people there are in the world, most of whom I will never know, never learn to care about, never speak to. Looking at a town from the freeway, I realize that each house and business represents the livelihood of many people, and the town itself seems like another world to me, one which I will never enter. When I was at Denver’s WaterWorld last weekend, I was amazed at the sheer number of people there in their swimsuits, amazed at the amount of people who chose the same recreation that afternoon. There was something unifying about being with a few thousand park visitors all in swimsuits (which often don’t leave much to the imagination, I realized)—and everyone was comfortable and recreating happily. This feeling I’ve described can be awe-inspiring in a positive way, but it also has a shade of fear along its underside, a fear that my individuality might be lost in this crowd of humanity. If there is such a diversity of people and so many people, am I even important? Do my aspirations, worries, relationships, and opinions matter?

Sometimes we hear about the “faceless millions” (or billions if you will) that populate Earth. The thought that helps me through those overwhelming moments where I feel so inconsequential against the swarms of strangers I see is that these “faceless millions” do indeed have faces. And feelings. And families. And priorities. And opinions. Just like me.

So then I find myself contemplating the middle-aged, bikini-clad woman at the park. She will never know me, and I will never know her. I have no idea of the triumphs and failures she has experienced during her life. The stretch marks of childbirth and the graying hairs on her head provide a few clues to her experience, but unless I actually go to her and open myself up, she will always remain a stranger. Yet I don’t want her to remain a faceless stranger, because I am determined to recognize that she matters. Her opinions matter, even though I might not agree with them. Her relationships matter, even though I might not be able to help them in any way. Her unexpressed heartaches matter, and I pray God that there is someone in her life that can listen to them and help her, because I cannot. I’m just a stranger.

Obviously, it’s impossible to meet every person in a city, let alone the world. I don’t think that’s the point. Those people who do come into our lives are suddenly transformed from “faceless strangers” to people we care about, people we dislike, people we try to help, and people we avoid. Those are the people God has given us to work with, and it is with them that we can have a direct influence. While it isn’t always a bad thing to think on an impersonal, global scale, I’m more concerned with those who I know personally. When I think of the first time I met someone who has become a close friend, I am amazed by all the experiences, feelings, and thoughts that we have since shared. A single human being is such a complex creature, and it is beautiful when two complex beings with so much hidden in their depths can come together to share parts of themselves with one another. So as I go through life and see strangers around me, I will try to remember that they do have faces, and that their lives are every bit as meaningful and important as mine. Most likely, I won’t ever meet a small percentage of the people on this planet, but I hope and pray that I will be more than a “faceless stranger” to those I do.

Music and the Spoken Word 2 weeks ago = refreshing

Cultivate an Attitude of Understanding

Delivered By: Lloyd D. Newell

For centuries, people have separated each other by setting up barriers and boundaries—the divisions we call “us” and “them.” In our interconnected society, we interact almost daily with people whose heritage, religion, skin color, gender, language, or choices are different from ours. The challenge lies in how we treat each other when we have little in common except our humanity.

Small children seem to be especially good at this. When you smile at a child, she smiles back. When you make a face, she giggles. When you wave good-bye, she waves too. Barriers disappear in this simple, satisfying exchange. Perhaps children haven’t yet learned to see those barriers. Or maybe they see more clearly what’s really important.

Anne Frank, a child herself and a victim of persecution because of her heritage, wrote that “we’re all searching for happiness; we’re all leading lives that are different and yet the same.”1
“I still believe,” she observed, “in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”2

Accepting one another—no matter our differences—is a measure of our character and our hearts. Acceptance is not about changing “us” or “them”; it’s about a friendly gesture, a smile, an appreciation for interesting company or new ideas. It is learning to accept others despite mistakes, weaknesses, or bad choices and still loving them for who they are. Acceptance comes more easily when we are at peace, confident of our own place, our beliefs and direction.

“Cultivate an attitude of understanding, and come to genuinely like people,” religious leader Thomas S. Monson has said. “I’ve rarely met a person that I didn’t want to get to know better. ... It doesn’t matter who they are.”3


1 The Diary of a Young Girl, ed. Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler, trans. Susan Massotty (1991), 324.
2 The Diary of a Young Girl, 332.
3 In Gerry Avant, “Church President to Be Sustained in Solemn Assembly,” Church News, April 5, 2008, 4.

filling the pensieve

I just need to freewrite a little to get my thoughts in order. The last few weeks have been a huge transitional time for me physically, spiritually, and emotionally. I’m trying to sort through a lot of baggage and emotions and trying to figure out where I’m going with my life. Today and yesterday I’ve been feeling a little melancholy and unmotivated. I had a flash of fear today that I might be entering another depressive episode, but I don’t think I am. I just feel like I’m not doing much with my life right now. I feel like I’m constantly putting out energy to do things, but those things aren’t yielding much back. I wish I had a regular schedule with a job or something. As it is, I water the lawn twice a week, I help dad with concrete twice a week, (which is good cuz I’m making money). I try to study for the GRE which I’m taking in a month. I try to do volunteer work but that’s not very time-consuming, just once or twice a week at most. And those are all good things and they do keep me busy some of the time, but I’ve gone a few weeks where many days I have nothing to look forward to, nothing really planned. I go to the gym to work on my ever-present goal of gaining muscle, which is working. :) But I just feel a bit stagnant. I’m not sure what it is exactly that I lack, but I just feel a bit lackadaisical and unenthusiastic.

At the beginning of the summer when I came back from BYU I was so excited to get involved with my internship and volunteering and going on trips and everything, but the internship fell through, and the classes I took ended, and now all I have is working at home w/ Dad which I don’t always like. I’m not sure living at home is the best thing for me at this point, but I’m kinda stuck here, seeing as I have only about 5-6 weeks to go. The thing I don’t like is feeling obligated to be here and like I’m deserting my family if I go out. When I’m at school, no one asks me where I’m going and I can just do what I want. However, it’s not always a bad thing to feel obligated to one’s family. I am greatly indebted to my parents for what they do for me and provide me with free of charge. Meals. Health care. A car. Fresh fruit. A bed to sleep in. Air conditioning. So I feel I do owe them some of my energy in helping around the yard, especially since their own health is deteriorating.

The thing that frustrates me the most is my relationship with Dad; it's by far the most imbalanced, difficult relationship I have right now. Every time I’m around him, I have this sense that he doesn’t even know me anymore, and I would work on telling him who I am if I wasn’t so afraid he would reject me. It’s not just the gay thing, although that is a big part. It’s about accepting that I may have different opinions and that I have a different way of life than he does. I view things like money, work, play, love, sexuality, and spirituality in a very different way from him. Some days I just want to blow open the wall of non-communication between us and shake things up a little, in hopes that we might begin to finally have an honest, genuine dialogue. I just might, someday, but not right now. It’s the risk we take when we get involved with other human beings. Any relationship is a risk, be it friendship, parenthood, or a romantic relationship. We have no guarantee for what the other person will end up doing or becoming, and we must simply press forward with the knowledge we have and the common sense to keep out of too much trouble.

UGH! Life.

To finish, I’ll recount a good thing from today. During the sacrament, after I’d passed the water by without partaking, I was sitting praying to God to help me figure things out, to keep his Influence in my life and to help me be aware of it and how to share it with others. I read the words of the hymn “Reverently and Meekly Now” with such phrases as “I have loved thee as my friend / with a love that cannot end.” And after reading it and praying I had a few moments of that exquisite peace that I sometimes feel where the only words that describe it are “It’s going to be ok. It is ok. I am ok. Everything will be ok.” A calm, powerful reassurance that I can be at peace, that I’ll be ok. I feel that as long as I stay in touch with my heart and my soul, the very essence of who I am and the person I want to become, I will be ok. As long as I don’t lose sight of my role in life as a witness of truth, a listening ear, and a helping hand, I will be ok. As long as I stay my selfishness and try to think of others first, I’ll be ok. As long as I seek and celebrate goodness in all its forms, I’ll be ok. As long as I stand up for what is right and build the courage to speak out against what is wrong, I’ll be ok.

I’m reading Man’s Search for Meaning right now, and it has caused me to reflect on the meaning of my life. I don’t think that the purpose of life is to be happy. There are so many people who are miserable and who have horrible lives, but who may see meaning in their suffering, which one might label as happiness or acceptance. Many happiness-oriented people, even in the Church, tend toward hedonism, which isn't the point of living. I think that we should seek but not expect happiness; we should also expect and not shun suffering, for it will teach us more than happiness ever will. All to often I get depressed about having a bad day or two, when I have forgotten all the days where I was happy if not reasonably content. It’s in days like yesterday and today (which really weren’t that terrible) that I reflect more and that I pause to see where I am and where I am headed. I have to remind myself that it’s ok to have a blue day once in a while, because I have so many that are wonderful.

Hope is dead.

Y'all better give up now: I found this in the Salt Lake City Cemetery.

FIXING FRANK...fixing myself?

The other day when I was at the library I picked out a DVD that intrigued me called Fixing Frank. The synopsis reads:

“Reporter Frank Johnston is sent undercover by his boyfriend, psychotherapist Jonathan Baldwin to write and exposé on Dr. Arthur Apsey, a therapist who claims he can successfully change gay men to straight men! Posing as a patient, Frank eventually falls under Apsey’s spell. As Frank’s relationship with Jonathan deteriorates, a fierce psychological tug of war erupts between the two doctors over the heart and the mind of Frank.”

Basically, the film examines reparative therapy, the type of therapy designed to “repair” a homosexual individual and help them become, if not completely heterosexual, the least homosexual possible. For a while, I wondered which side the film was promoting (it is ultimately against RT), but it was interesting and challenging to hear the arguments made by Dr. Apsey as he defended his methods. Dr. Baldwin denounces such therapy as being inhumane and damaging, but Apsey boldly advocates the virtues of his approach.

When I first came out to myself, I remember the great distress that permeated every moment, the looming acceptance of something I had always hoped could not be true about me. I remember thinking that once I went to a therapist and worked through my issues I would be “fine” in six months or so—what a cheerfully naïve prognosis! In the counseling I did do, I worked through my self-worth issues and my perfectionism, such that by the end of the semester I was no longer depressed and, hey! I even started to like myself a little.

It was at that point that I began attending Evergreen meetings, where I met other gay LDS men like myself who were seeking support and answers to far-reaching questions like “Is change possible?” “Could I one day marry a woman?” etc. When I first joined, I was told to buy three books: In Quiet Desperation, Growing into Manhood, and Jason Park’s Resolving Homosexual Problems: A Guide for LDS Men. I read the Park book first, and it essentially advocates a reparative approach, discussing male emotional needs and possible reasons why men are socialized to have homosexual feelings. I found many things interesting and because I had so little knowledge and experience it all seemed fine and dandy to me. Just fill those homoemotional and homosocial needs, and the homosexuality goes away! Or if it doesn’t go away, it will diminish such that normal heterosexual feelings could take its place, or the person would feel less distressed.

Wanting to know how this might happen, I began reading Alan Meninger’s book Growing into Manhood. As has happened with only two or three books that I can recall, I couldn’t finish it. The book freaked me out! The message I got from what I read was that I would essentially have to give up my personality and interests and force myself into more “masculine” circles in order to learn how to be a man because I didn’t when I was growing up. While I grant that I did feel excluded from many of the “male rites of passage” in my childhood and teenage years, what that book proposed scared me and seemed to place before me an insurmountable and perhaps damaging task. So I stopped reading it, bewildered and wondering what would happen to me if I could never change and I remained (gasp) myself with (gasp) homosexual feelings.

Then I read In Quiet Desperation. Though I don’t know how much I agree with/relate to it now, at the time it was so helpful for me in getting me away from the I-have-to-change-soon-or-I’ll-always-be-miserable mindset. The concept that helped me most was when Ty Mansfield said that, in reference to our ultimate salvation, our sexual orientation won’t save us. Heterosexuality isn’t our savior, God is. From that point on I decided it was much better to work on my relationship with God and remain close to him instead of trying to be someone I’m not and feel something I don’t. I threw out the idea of trying to become straight and “resolve my homosexual problems” and instead worked on self-acceptance, spirituality, and developing wholeness in my life.

Seeing the film last night brought back all of these memories, including the prior conflict I had felt, feeling much like Frank at times where I didn’t know what I wanted or who to believe. In one scene, Dr. Apsey offers Frank a pill that he says will make him straight, hypothetically. He asks Frank to ignore everything other than his own voice and then asks if he would take the pill. I have been asked a similar question when I’ve spoken in classrooms. People have asked me if I would change my orientation were I given the opportunity. For a while the answer would have been a simple “yes,” but now I’m not so sure. I have learned so much about living and I have had to confront issues that I never would have because of my homosexuality. I have learned greater empathy and understanding, for myself and others. It’s a tricky question, and right now I have an idea the answer today would be “no.”

How do I feel about reparative therapy? The thought I took away from watching this movie was that changing one's sexual orientation is, as with many things, a choice. Those people who do not want their same-sex desires might benefit from such therapy, though some people come off worse because of it. I don't see it as unethical or immoral to help people attain the state of being they desire, but it is a choice on the part of the person and it takes an enormous amount of committment. Personally, I think it would be damaging for me to deconstruct my feelings and my reality at this point. However, I have deep respect for my friends who are trying to change and those in mixed-orientation relationships. Props to you if you can do it, and I won't try to stop you. Every person has to decide what is best for him/her. The following words of my favorite musical Wicked seem to fit those who choose either path:

Glinda: I hope you're happy / Now that you're choosing this...

Elphaba: You too - I hope it brings you bliss

Both: I really hope you get it / And you don't live to regret it / I hope you're happy in the end / I hope you're happy, my friend...

enfin!!!!

After a couple weeks of aimlessly wandering about my neighborhood looking for people to talk to or things to do, I finally have something that will keep me occupied!!! I fell upon an opportunity to volunteer at a hospice and homecare facility in Salt Lake, and I'm way excited about it. It might seem bizarre to be excited to work with dying people and their families, but when I first interviewed with the social workers at the place I came away with a jubilant sense of assurance that I really am on track with my career direction. I love this stuff, and this is yet another confirmation that I am working toward a profession that will be meaningful and fulfilling to me. The people there are so awesome, and when I came out to one of the social workers, she came out to me, which was fun(ny). But I look forward to shadowing the SW's, chaplain, and nurses, and eventually having people to visit and help out. I'm sure I'll have experiences to share and feeling to explore as I get into it.