{"id":1366,"date":"2020-04-05T12:46:54","date_gmt":"2020-04-05T16:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/?p=1366"},"modified":"2020-04-26T14:22:13","modified_gmt":"2020-04-26T18:22:13","slug":"a-thank-you-note","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/a-thank-you-note\/","title":{"rendered":"A Thank You Note"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I first met Marianne<\/em>, I was taken aback. I wondered, had I met this woman before?<\/em> She was certainly talking to me as if I had. I wondered if she\u2019d mistaken me for someone else she\u2019d met\u2014perhaps a few days ago, but maybe a few months, or even a few decades. But as she went on and on about her children not coming to visit her, the wild nights out she had in her twenties, and how much she hated the music she heard every morning at the nursing home, all before telling me it was nice to meet me, I realized I would be in for a wild ride with Marianne<\/em>. She was the type of person who could go on talking for half an hour before waiting for you to respond, someone who could (and did) tell her whole life story before even getting your name. The kind of person who would ask you for a vodka soda or her favorite beer, and you wouldn\u2019t be sure if she was joking or not. I realized pretty early on how refreshing that was\u2014how hard it is to find that kind of openness today, especially with such a large age gap\u2014and I looked forward to meeting up with Marianne<\/em> every week. I could tell it meant a lot to her too. One day as I was leaving, I told her I\u2019d see her next week, and she asked, \u201cAre you sure? Can you make a promise to me? My daughters always tell me that, but then they never make it.\u201d I paused for a bit, before saying, \u201cOf course! It\u2019s Valentine\u2019s Day next week. How could I spend it without you?!\u201d<\/p>\n

I knew Marianne\u2019s<\/em> daughters weren\u2019t as detached from her as she claimed they were, since I saw them visiting her on multiple occasions. From the few minutes I had to get to know them, I could see how much they loved their mother. But I get where Marianne<\/em> was coming from. She was lonely at the nursing home\u2014a lot of the other patients in hospice care were nonverbal or in too much pain to want to talk, and there certainly wasn\u2019t anyone else like Marianne<\/em> at the nursing home. I don\u2019t know exactly what Marianne\u2019s<\/em> relationship with her daughter looks like, but I know it can be easier to project things onto the ones you love than to accept the way they are sometimes. And I also understand how hard it can be to have so many thoughts running through your mind but no one to hear them out and really care about what you have to say.<\/p>\n

Before I began my patient visits, I was apprehensive, wondering what I had to offer these people who had no idea who I was. I wanted to enter this space humbly, so I wasn\u2019t expecting to be able to offer much \u201chelp,\u201d but I think this gave me a greater appreciation for the golden moments of laughter and appreciation I was able to have every week\u2014 such as when a man who had ignored me every week let me organize his packages for him, when a nonverbal patient smiled as I played the Beach Boys on Spotify, and when Marianne<\/em> told me to watch out for people who might steal my car like they did to her (not a true story). While I recognized that I wasn\u2019t able to tangibly change these people\u2019s lives in many ways, I also saw how powerful simply listening could be\u2014especially in the medical world, where people often feel unheard by caregivers because of race, sexuality, socioeconomic status, and age. With my hospice experience being cut short by COVID-19, I wish I could have another moment with Marianne<\/em> to hold her hands like she does when she thanks me for my weekly visits, a moment to tell her that I\u2019m the one thankful to have met someone like her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I first met Marianne, I was taken aback. I wondered, had I met this woman before? She was certainly talking to me as if I had. I wondered if she\u2019d mistaken me for someone else she\u2019d met\u2014perhaps a few days ago, but maybe a few months, or even a few decades. But as she … Continue reading “A Thank You Note”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"school":[7],"program_year":[31],"class_list":["post-1366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hospice","school-princeton","program_year-31"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1366"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1493,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions\/1493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"school","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/school?post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"program_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_year?post=1366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}