|
| |
|
Remembering
By: Robert Lux, Shanti Program Director & Trudy James,
CareTeam Program Specialist
ROBERT: (1982-1988) The year was 1982.
The illness was GRID (gay-related immune deficiency). It was beginning to kill
gay men. Two years later it was taking some of my closest friends. We rallied
around those who were sick the best we could while beset by our own fears and
uncertainties. During my training as a Shanti volunteer in 1988, I came full
face with my helplessness and my anger. A number of my close friends were sick,
dying, or already dead. Before my training was completed, my room-mate would
choose to take his life rather than live with the shame and pain of the illness
that had ravaged his partner’s body one year earlier.
TRUDY: (1988-1997) I first met AIDS as
a novice hospital chaplain in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1988. Already, it was a
challenging and a comprehensive disease. AIDS created unparalleled fear in
hospital personnel as well as patients. Men and women were affected throughout
the state, all dying too young, with too much suffering. Much of that suffering
came from stigma and rejection. Churches seemed to be part of the problem as
some proclaimed AIDS to be God’s punishment for homosexuality. At the end of my
chaplain residency, I wanted nothing more to do with AIDS.
However, the stigmatized death of a
close friend from high school due to AIDS in 1989, called me to reconsider. I
became the Arkansas Coordinator for a new four-state AIDS CareTeam Program Men
and women of all ages from a wide variety of Christian denominations and the
Jewish synagogue joined together on CareTeams to become friends to people with
AIDS in cities and small towns---to the end. These relationships changed lives
on both sides.
CareTeam members learned from personal
experience about subjects that had often been taboo for them---homosexuality and
death. They learned to cross traditional boundaries of race, and religion. They
also learned courage from their CarePartners who were facing certain death
bravely, often with awareness and humor. The CarePartners learned that they were
loved, even if their own family and/or church rejected them. We all learned that
anyone who is sick does much better if they have a community of support; the
CareTeam paradox mingled laughter and joy with ongoing sorrow.
ROBERT:
(1989-2006) Those first years of
volunteering placed us face-to-face with death continually. Even today, I carry
with me the numerous images of hospital rooms and nursing homes, of young men’s
emaciated bodies, of gaunt stares on the faces of boys grown old too soon. And I
recall how I marveled then, as I do now, at the courage of those who were
dealing with dying on their own terms, and the lessons they taught those of us
left behind.
As the epidemic changed with new
medications in the mid-nineties, the Shanti program reached out to those in
hospitals and skilled nursing facilities for whom the medications were failing.
And in the late nineties, volunteers began providing emotional support to
inmates with HIV/AIDS in our local jails. Now serving inmates at eight locations
in Western Washington, our dedicated volunteers of Shanti’s Inmate Support
Program bring caring, confidential support to many who are isolated and alone.
Over the years, the Shanti program’s mission has remained the same while the
emphasis has changed from supporting those who were dying to building sustaining
relationships with people living with HIV/AIDS. I have been privileged to
witness inspiring transformations in the lives of our clients and volunteers.
TRUDY: (1997-2006) In 1997, I moved to
Seattle and I soon discovered that isolation, depression, medication side
effects, and ongoing stigma affected people in Seattle as well. CareTeams were
needed. Seattle CareTeams developed in many Catholic parishes and Protestant
congregations, but also attracted members from diverse spiritual perspectives,
including Buddhist, B’hai, Mormon, Hindu, Sufi, Wiccan and others who were not
affiliated with any organized religious group. All who became involved had a
desire to serve and a heart opened by compassion.
The CarePartners were more diverse as
well, including African, Eastern European and Asian immigrants, Native
Americans, and more persons living with AIDS and cancer, and AIDS and mental
illness or addiction. But the relationships between CarePartners and CareTeam
members were the same, changing lives on both sides, exposing people to new
realities. Today we have over 42 CareTeams and 80 Care Partners, proving that
diverse people can come together in a community of compassion to help one
another.
|
|
