Read Online I, the Divine by Alameddine Rabih - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Alameddine Rabih
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number of organizations. I believed I should do the same once I settled down somewhere.
After my second divorce, I ended up living in San Francisco. I volunteered for an AIDS organization. I chose one that provided emotional or practical support to people with AIDS. Practical support was not an option for me. There was no way I was going to clean somebody’s bathroom, no matter how sick he was. I never cleaned my own house. How could I conceive of cleaning someone else’s? I also absolutely abhorred grocery shopping.
An emotional support volunteer provided peer counseling, which entailed listening to clients, agreeing with them, having them expound on their feelings, and then validating those same feelings with unconditional positive regard. This is not as easy as it sounds. In any case, in the first couple of years, I could not get any of my clients to express any feelings, let alone my validating them, because they all died on me. That was the thing with AIDS: it killed my clients, rather quickly, I might add. I could not figure out how Dina thought volunteering would help my state of mind. I became an emotional wreck, but all the staff at the organization thought I would be an incredible volunteer if I ever had the chance to work with a client, since I had no problems expressing my feelings.
My first client was Dominic, a Frenchman living in San Francisco. After my training, a weekend of intensive indoctrination, I was assigned to Dominic because of my fluent French. I was given all his particulars: age, relationships, medical symptoms, emotional symptoms, and so forth. He had been waiting for a volunteer for eight months. Unfortunately, my supervisor told me, he was at San Francisco General recovering from a bout of pneumocystic pneumonia. I began getting ready the instant I hung up the phone. I practiced what I would say to Dominic. I stood in front of the mirror making sure I had on my nonjudgmental face, my trust-me-and-tell-me-how-you-are-feeling face. I took my bulky training manual with me.
I arrived at the hospital and inquired about Dominic. I talked to his nurse, who told me he was alone in his room, not doing too well. I walked into his room and saw an emaciated person. He had breathing tubes in his nose as well as a couple of IVs in his arm. I was unsure what to do. Should I wake him to ask him how he was feeling? I sat down on the chair facing the bed to sort out my options. Dominic, lying inert on the bed, had a thin mustache and a wan smile on his face. He looked like a man who had experienced deep sorrow, sorrow without redress. His thin, knobby fingers clutched the blanket tightly. Suddenly he opened his eyes, looking slightly bewildered, as if he did not know where he was. That happened to me often, where I would wake up in my room uncertain where I was. He looked at me quizzically.
“Hello, Dominic,” I said, using the correct pronunciation of his name. “My name is Sarah. I was sent here as your emotional support volunteer.” I wanted to make certain he knew I was not a practical support volunteer.
He mumbled something. It took my brain a minute to register that the reason it was incomprehensible was because he was speaking French. I understood three languages, but it took me a minute to recognize anything outside the dominant language I was involved with at the time.
“Salut, Alphonse,” he said.
Oh, boy, I thought, he had the AIDS craziness. I had not prepared for that. Trust your instincts, the supervisor had told me, so I did. “ Pardon , Dominic ,”I said gently, “ mais je ne suis pas Alphonse . Je m’appelle Sarah .”
“ Au revoir, Alphonse ,” he said and died, just like that. It was only the fact that my father was a physician that stopped me from screaming at the top of my lungs right then and there. I ran out of the room looking for a nurse and found one. Dominic was declared dead, and the nurse was nice enough to send me home with a tranquilizer.
My second client was
After my second divorce, I ended up living in San Francisco. I volunteered for an AIDS organization. I chose one that provided emotional or practical support to people with AIDS. Practical support was not an option for me. There was no way I was going to clean somebody’s bathroom, no matter how sick he was. I never cleaned my own house. How could I conceive of cleaning someone else’s? I also absolutely abhorred grocery shopping.
An emotional support volunteer provided peer counseling, which entailed listening to clients, agreeing with them, having them expound on their feelings, and then validating those same feelings with unconditional positive regard. This is not as easy as it sounds. In any case, in the first couple of years, I could not get any of my clients to express any feelings, let alone my validating them, because they all died on me. That was the thing with AIDS: it killed my clients, rather quickly, I might add. I could not figure out how Dina thought volunteering would help my state of mind. I became an emotional wreck, but all the staff at the organization thought I would be an incredible volunteer if I ever had the chance to work with a client, since I had no problems expressing my feelings.
My first client was Dominic, a Frenchman living in San Francisco. After my training, a weekend of intensive indoctrination, I was assigned to Dominic because of my fluent French. I was given all his particulars: age, relationships, medical symptoms, emotional symptoms, and so forth. He had been waiting for a volunteer for eight months. Unfortunately, my supervisor told me, he was at San Francisco General recovering from a bout of pneumocystic pneumonia. I began getting ready the instant I hung up the phone. I practiced what I would say to Dominic. I stood in front of the mirror making sure I had on my nonjudgmental face, my trust-me-and-tell-me-how-you-are-feeling face. I took my bulky training manual with me.
I arrived at the hospital and inquired about Dominic. I talked to his nurse, who told me he was alone in his room, not doing too well. I walked into his room and saw an emaciated person. He had breathing tubes in his nose as well as a couple of IVs in his arm. I was unsure what to do. Should I wake him to ask him how he was feeling? I sat down on the chair facing the bed to sort out my options. Dominic, lying inert on the bed, had a thin mustache and a wan smile on his face. He looked like a man who had experienced deep sorrow, sorrow without redress. His thin, knobby fingers clutched the blanket tightly. Suddenly he opened his eyes, looking slightly bewildered, as if he did not know where he was. That happened to me often, where I would wake up in my room uncertain where I was. He looked at me quizzically.
“Hello, Dominic,” I said, using the correct pronunciation of his name. “My name is Sarah. I was sent here as your emotional support volunteer.” I wanted to make certain he knew I was not a practical support volunteer.
He mumbled something. It took my brain a minute to register that the reason it was incomprehensible was because he was speaking French. I understood three languages, but it took me a minute to recognize anything outside the dominant language I was involved with at the time.
“Salut, Alphonse,” he said.
Oh, boy, I thought, he had the AIDS craziness. I had not prepared for that. Trust your instincts, the supervisor had told me, so I did. “ Pardon , Dominic ,”I said gently, “ mais je ne suis pas Alphonse . Je m’appelle Sarah .”
“ Au revoir, Alphonse ,” he said and died, just like that. It was only the fact that my father was a physician that stopped me from screaming at the top of my lungs right then and there. I ran out of the room looking for a nurse and found one. Dominic was declared dead, and the nurse was nice enough to send me home with a tranquilizer.
My second client was
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