Joys and Sorrows come with Service

I picked up one of the phrases used in the ITA workshop and added it to our workshop, "this volunteer activity is like none other. You will recieve some of your greatest pleasures with your animal and you will experience some real sorrows along the way." This week I learned again how true this is.

This Tuesday as Holly and I visited at Liberty Health Care Center, I went to a familiar room to see one our regulars. The last few times we had been to see her, she was not her usual self. This is the lady who loved to wear hats, played the piano by ear, had an electric keyboard in her room, and who always loved to have Holly on her bed for cuddling or Bruce to fix him a peanut butter sandwich. Tuesday her bed was stripped to the mattress, her personal belonging gone, and her name removed from the door. Her piano playing is no more on earth.

That makes five friends on that one hallway Holly, Bruce and I have said goodbye to in the last three years we have been visiting. Those are the sorrows, but I must remember and hope that in our visits we gave to them a portion of the joy they shared with us.