WHEN AIDES ARE PART OF YOUR LIFE, PART TWO: UNEXPECTED GIFTS

When healthcare aides enter your home, some leave quickly. They say it’s too much work or the fit just isn’t right. And some leave for unexplained reasons. But with the good ones, they come in as strangers, but can become part of your life, almost like family.

I find myself learning from them. Most have had hard lives and lacked the advantages I’ve had.  But they’ve been schooled by life; they have wisdom and stories to tell if you’re willing to listen. 

All of our aides are immigrants. They come from Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica or elsewhere. Doreen, our wonderful aide from Jamaica, said, “do you ever see a white person doing this job? They think they are above cleaning up bodies.” My father, as a homeless young teenager in the Ukraine, washed the filthy underwear of the rich to survive. He told us many times, all work is honorable. He, too, was an immigrant in America.

How could I manage my husband’s care without immigrants? It sickens me that our president insults them as rapists, drug dealers, criminals or would-be terrorists. He wants to build walls to keep them out. If he has his way, America will no longer be a refuge for the exiles, the poor and “tempest-torn,” as Emma Lazarus’s poem on the Statue of Liberty declares.  The aides that we have had come bearing gifts and blessings, as they tend to bodies and minds that are troubled. It breaks my heart that they work so hard for so little money.

Hannah, from Ghana, was the first who came to us more than a year and a half ago, after my husband had been released from rehab. I was terrified, even thought Tony might die at any time. But Hannah said “Only God knows when it’s a person’s time. You can’t get so upset. You have to stay up or you’ll bring him down.”  Soon she told me her story—how twelve years earlier, she gave birth to quadruplets. The last to be born, a tiny girl, had so much wrong that the doctors didn’t expect her to survive. She spent a long, long time in the hospital, and for much of her life has been in and out of their care, but increadibly, not for the past two year. He story was an inspirational miracle. Hannah, a person of deep faith, told me how she’s taken care of Nora all these years with never any respite. After so many hospitalizations and a trachea that has to be kept clean, Nora needs 24 hour nursing care that Hannah has had to fight for. “You have to be strong, Achsah,” Hannah said, “and know it’s not all up to you.” I knew from the first week that Hannah was an angel sent to teach me patience, which doesn’t come naturally.

When I needed more help, particularly during the night, Hannah brought me her brother Aaron, a gentle man, and her sister-in-law Mary, who comforts me when I get afraid, sharing what she knows about what might lie ahead, but assuring we can deal with it. She has spent time doing hospice care, sitting by people, holding their hands when they die.  Mary sometimes looks so serious and somber. Just recently, she told me that when she was sixteen, her beloved twenty-year old sister died. Now, she holds people who are dying, comforting them, doing for them what she couldn’t do for her sister, She becomes attached to these people, as if they are the sister she still mourns, who is always in her thoughts. 

These wonderful beings watch over Tony, caring for him during the day, keeping him safe all night, attending to him when he calls out not knowing what he needs. Aaron has been with us more than a year but I only now learned that his children and wife still live in Ghana. A necessary family separation that enables him to support them. One evening, he said, “how wonderful it is in Ghana. My big family, we all get together.” They sit around, talk, eat and relax, enjoying each other, not staring at cell phones. Aaron’s eyes lit up as he described life there—so different from life here in America. Christians and Muslims get along. “There is no stress. All of us who come over will return to Ghana when we retire. We work here to support our families. But we all want to go back.”

Elijah is from Nigeria. We had a problem when he first came. Tony was having a bad day and Elijah put his hands on him: “Jesus loves you. Don’t worry.” Tony freaked out; he has a big problem with God, let alone Jesus. Elijah knows we are Jewish, but he was hurt. I thanked him for his care, but said he was upsetting Tony. Next time Elijah brought a pamphlet of Paul’s Epistle to Romans, and offered it as a gift to Tony as he was leaving. “Elijah, I’m sorry, but Jews don’t do Jesus!”

Elijah wants to share Jesus, but I’d rather share food. He often goes off to work an eight-hour night job after leaving us. He never brings food. I don’t know when he eats or sleeps. Elijah has his pride, but one evening I asked him to share our dinner. At the table, he began to tell me about how frightening his life was in Nigeria. “Islamists want to make it an Islamic country. There is so much violence; they hate us Christians.” Armed men have surrounded his house at night, invisible in the bush. They might attack his family at any time. He had to get out before they were killed. So a year ago, he came to America with his wife and three young boys. In Nigeria he had been an accountant. He knows many languages, including French and Arabic. But here in America he must work menial jobs. He’s underpaid and struggling, not just to feed his family, but to bring over his 100-year old father from Nigeria, the only one left behind.

Then there is Michael, from Ghana, with a soul as beautiful as his smile. Hannah brought him to us, when she and Mary and Aaron were all going to Ghana for a month. “You will love Michael,” she said, and she was right. Michael took over the 10-hour nights for five weeks. I saw the way he was with Tony—patient, tender, calm, strong and gentle. Night after night, whatever the situation was—whether Tony slept or whether he called out all night -- Michael was steady and calmed him down, displaying the model of patience and kindness.

I liked him so much. The moment he walked in, the spirit in the apartment changed. He was quiet, just did his kind job with grace and competence, while never raising his voice or giving commands to Tony. I longed to know who this remarkable person was. From just a few comments, I knew we shared the same values, despite our different backgrounds. Michael had something I wanted—calm, joy and patience.  Every night when he came in at 10, I asked, how was your day? “Wonderful,” he said, smiling, radiating a peaceful happiness.  Because of this I wanted to learn more about Michael the person. Did he live alone? Did he have a family?  “I’m a lone star,” he said. An introvert, but high on empathy. He told me he tries to put himself in the place of his patient; and he listens. To listen is not to judge, but to understand. Just before he left, he finally told me a little about himself.

Michael lives a simple life; works almost every day of the year, often 12 hour days, then goes home to his small apartment, makes oatmeal, showers, and goes to bed, luxuriating in his sleep. He has three good friends, but that is enough because his needs are met. I’m not sure I’ve ever met a person so at peace, so happy, but he’s worked for it. As a young man, he admitted, he was angry, but then something happened and the anger left. He told me of his experiences with white people he’s worked for. Some people were unkind and made assumptions about who he was just because he was black. But he refused to mirror that prejudice in generalizing about whites, or Jews. “You know, who worked for black civil rights?” he said the morning before his final night with us. “White Jews! Why should I hate them?’ Michael, with his beautiful black skin and his gorgeous white smile, is my model of kindness, empathy, patience, wisdom and goodness.  He is someone I aspire to. Knowing we were going to miss his presence terribly, we took pictures that I’ll always treasure.

Such caretakers are angels; they appear, they leave a message and eventually leave altogether. Many of them have biblical names: Hannah, Aaron, Mary, Elijah. Michael never would tell me his last name—and I said to myself, well that’s how it was in the Bible, when angels came, they didn’t carry a last name with them either.