Hats off to You!

Friday night, my wife and I went to the volunteer appreciation dinner for an organization call Pathways.  It is a group which is dedicated to providing service to the terminally ill and compassionate support to grieving families. My wife has been serving with them for the better part of a year.  Because of the nature of the support you offer as a volunteer, you do not necessarily see the others who also serve.  This was the first time she saw so many of her fellow workers in one place.

It was a nice evening.  They had a local dance group entertain us.  They served dinner, recognized each volunteer, gave away small tokens of appreciation, and recognized a few who have gone above and beyond the call.

The table where we sat had two other volunteers and their guests.  One was a lady who needs someone to drive her anywhere she goes, but she still serves by going to the hospital and meeting with people and their families who need the support Pathways offers.  She received a volunteer of the year award.  You could tell it meant the world to her.  Even though we only shared a few minutes at a table together, I must confess I was quite proud when they announced her name.  I hoop and hollered on her behalf.  She blushed.  What can I say, you sit at my table, you become my people.

The other volunteer at our table brought, as her guest, the women she serves.  Watching them interact, you could tell there was a significant bond between them.  I will share a bit more about that in a moment, but for now all I can say is, their interaction spoke of a much deeper commitment than simply giving a few hours to help someone in need.  You could tell they shared life, and it was beautiful.

After the awards were all given out, Meg, the woman who coordinates it all, transitioned to a much more poignant part of the program.  It was the time given to recognize those whom they had served who had passed this last year.  She mentioned the honor my wife had of being present with the women she served as the lady made the journey from this life to the next.  She acknowledge this is not the everyone’s experience by mentioning another volunteer who left the person they cared for in good health, only to find they had passed two days later.  No matter what the circumstances was at the end, they wanted to take a few moments to remember those they had served, and loved.

Because last year the candles set off the fire alarm in the venue, Pathways decided to have vases where flowers would be placed, representing each life which was lost.  Meg then read off each name.  There were 22 clients who died this last year.  It was powerful to watch each caregiver make their way to the table, select a flower, and then place it in the vase.  It was especially so when the name of the lady my wife served was called, and she got up to take part in honoring Neva.

A few moments later, the lady who was sitting across the table from us, who had brought the women she serves, stood at the reading of a name.  She walked forward, placed a flower in a vase and then made her way back to our table.  When she arrived she bent down and hugged her guest.  It was the wife of the man whose name was read.  Their embrace was one which spoke of a shared journey through the pain of watching someone you love take the hard road home.  It also spoke of their shared commitment to walk the next stage of life together.  It was a privilege to sit so close and watch this sacred moment.

James tells us in his epistle, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”  By orphans and widows, I think he means those who do not have the ability to care for themselves and who do not have the family to step in the gap.  I have a feeling he would not mind one bit if we expanded the definition to include the terminally ill who find themselves with the same need.  What I witnessed in that room was religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless.  Witnessing it, the pollution of this self-centered world seemed so very far away.

You might notice in the picture some pretty colorful hats.  The theme for the evening was "Hats off to You," and to make it fun, we were asked to wear our favorite hat.  I did not wear a hat (rebellious from my youth, what can I say), but this fact in no way diminishes my desire to take my hat off to these people for their willingness to give far more than a few hours a week.  They invest their lives. They willingly enter into a stage of life which promises much joy, but which also promises the reality of loss and the pain which accompanies it.  They give selflessly and in the process they impart much value to the people they serve.  They are a gift, and their lives are a example to us all.

I take my hat off to them.

Residue

The church we have been attending has a table, just as you walk in, with name tags and markers on it.  Each Sunday, as we make our way into the service we stop and write our name on an adhesive tag and stick it to our chest.  In a community, with lots of new people this is helpful.

Most Sundays, as my wife and I are walking to the car we remove our name tags and fold them in half, allowing them to adhere to themselves, rendering them harmless.  Several weeks ago, one of the tags slipped through our little ritual.  It not only made it all the way home still attached to my wife’s shirt, it somehow was able to hang on long enough to make it to the laundry basket, where it stayed bonded to the fabric until laundry day.

I do the laundry in the house, mostly because of my mad folding skills.  I am also good at stain removal and sorting cloths into appropriate piles.  What I am not good at is checking pockets or, as I have recently discovered, removing name tags.

You would not think failing to remove a name tag would be that big of a deal, after all they peel off so easily only an hour after you put them on.  Heck, sometimes they even start to curl on the edges before you are ready to remove them. 

Not checking for name tags is a bigger deal than you think.  I am not sure if it is the days and days they sit in the laundry bin, or if the glue is activated by water to form a more secure bond, but I do know if you leave a name tag on for several days and then wash it, it sticks far better than you can imagine.

When I went to fold the cloths and discovered the shirt my wife had been wearing the prior Sunday still had a name tag attached to it I simply pulled it off.  Well, that is at least what I intended to do.  It gripped better than had when it was new.  While the paper peeled off, it left behind a film of glue which was unsightly and gave no indication it intended to become detached.  Bummer!

If water had given it super strength not normally seen in a name tag, I hypothesized another round in the washer might just release it.  No such luck, it just balled the glue up into clumps.  I then tried to roll these tiny balls around until they fell off the fabric.  This removed about half the glue, but there still was an outline where the tag had been and a significant amount of glue remained.

 I repeated the wash and rub process several times, but the glue could not be fully removed.  Eventually, I had to give into the fact the shirt, because of its contact with the name tag, and the experience of being bonded together in the water of the washer, would never be the same.  I threw it out.

This should not have surprised me.  Glue is supposed to bond things together. There is a commercial currently running where it shows one brand who’s strength comes from moving beyond the surface of a material and penetrating the pores to create a stronger bond.    In fact, glue which bonds like this often becomes stronger than the material itself.  Glue two pieces of wood together and try to break the joint.  What you will often find is the wood itself will give way and break before the glue joint fails. I think this is how all glue works, especially when it is given time to cure.

Next week will mark the one year anniversary from when I was told I was being unglued from the community where I served.  I had cured there for a very long time.  The initial tearing off of the tag was harder than I would have imagined, and it left glue stains much like the one on the shirt.

 I spent the first few months washing and rubbing, trying to remove any remnants of the glue which remained.  I was successful at balling up some of it and discarding it, but I could not fully remove it all.  At about the six month mark there was no longer any large globs of glue present on the fabric of my heart, but you could still see discoloration between the threads caused by the adhesive.

 If this had been a shirt, I would have long since thrown it away, but it is my heart and I cannot fulfill the call of God on my life without it, so I kept on washing and rubbing.  At the 10 month mark I would have told you all traces had been removed, there was no longer any glue left.   This felt good.  It felt like being freed. I was sure I had reached a significant bend on the road to healing from the loss.

I have often reminded others, when they are approaching the anniversary of a significant loss, not to be surprised if the feelings and emotions come back to them.  I have friends who talk about feelings out of sorts, not knowing why.  When they stop to think about it, they realize they are near the date when the loss occurred and they are able to make sense of what they are experiencing emotionally.  While the tag may have been ripped off, and they have done much work to remove the residue of the glue stain, when the anniversary comes around it is as if a stronger light illumines the fabric of their heart and the outline of the tag is once again able to be seen.

This is exactly what this season feels like for me, and while it makes me feel sad, I do not wish it away.  I am done washing and rubbing.  I am content to carry with me any remaining residue for the rest of my life.  What remains is a reminder of how significantly attached I was to a people.  I never want to forget that.  I want to remember the mark it has left on my life, because it reminds me not only of the loss, but of the love which was present.  For in truth, love is the glue and having once loved you simply cannot ever erase the mark it leaves.

I have hope the Lord will be gracious to me and once again place me in a community where I can become attached to a community of people where together we learn how to live and love like Jesus.  I desire to be with a people in community where we can glue ourselves to one another with the bond of love, where we can know the joy of being firmly connect, and of seeing others grafted into our clan. 

The glue which remains is a reminder it is indeed possible.