Take a Rest, or Rest will Take you
Resting is a pre-requisite to Success
I scrolled through my phone’s contacts. There had to have been at least one person I could talk to. Not that I had anything important to say, but only needing the meaningful connection I desired in a friend. I kept scrolling.
Name after name were contacts from hospice workers, hospice patients and their families and doctors. 90% of my contacts were either deceased or bereaved of their loved ones.
I remember the feeling of burnout. I remember having held so much space for those 3 years that felt like 1 really long day. This eternal work cracked the whip, but not out of domination or conquest, or even evil greed - the hand that cracked the whip was empathy for the gentle work of hospice care.
The inability to say no because I knew we were staffed too short for our patient list.
The inability to sleep well because any moment the phone would ring and say “she’s passed”.
The inability to sit down to a meal because the day consisted of paperwork in the morning and late night calls in the evening.
I felt fated to do this job. If I didn’t, my life meant very little. My inabilities were starting to stack up like a pile of last month’s bills - looming tasks I had never the discipline to complete.
One day, I met my hospice patient Phyllis, a 32 year old woman with cancer. We were the same age. She had kids, as did I. She was engaged, I was married. She used to go to church, I attended for her. One day, I cleaned her room. One day, we watched Bridezilla’s together and laughed. One day, I pushed her wheelchair up the hill, far way from the nursing home, so she could finally smoke. I don’t smoke, but that day I did, right there with her.
2 weeks before she died, her fiancé and her married with the hospice chaplain presiding over the ceremony. I wish I could have seen it.
But rest, it seems, took me away from my job. Don’t blame me. I had to rest. I had to quit. For the sake of my wife, kids and my sanity - I had to rest from hospice work. Not because the work itself strains on the soul, but because my soul gripped too tightly to the meaning of it all, I held out far too long without a rest and broke my grip.
I couldn't have imagined that releasing my grip on work helped me do it sustainably. Resting was the key to Work.
Hospice was a teacher, firm but rewarding, and taught me how to finally release myself all the while working - and release the grip on my outcome. I used to see my work as building skyscrapers to last, now I see it as building sandcastles until the tide comes in.
I’m sorry, Phyllis, that I didn’t make your wedding, or your death. I gave as much as I could - until I broke. But I didn’t break because the job was too much, or you were too much, I broke because I didn’t learn to rest.
“You can hold anything, no matter how heavy, for an eternity, if you only learn set it down for a rest. Even a small thing, such as a coffee mug, will weigh heavy if you never set it down.”
And that’s the gold I found from my work and slack, from Phyllis and all the contacts that I still have in my phone from so long ago - without you, I would have never learned to rest.
May your story continue