A Beautiful Family

Before I moved to the Bloomsburg area, my family and I lived in a suburban area outside Philadelphia called Media. While we lived there I went back to school in my 40s and earned a Masters degree in Counseling. After that I got a job the huge mental health facility called the Devereux Foundation.

I had a full time job at Devereux but I was told that if I wanted to earn extra money in the evenings and on the weekends, I could sign up to work extra shifts in one of the two group homes Devereux operated on its Berwyn campus. One house was for women, the other for men. Mentally "challenged" or "retarded" adults lived in each.

When I started doing this work I was a little nervous and afraid, as most are. These people all had different things wrong with them; some were incontinent, one was legally blind, some couldn't speak, some spoke but not well. One of the men laughed all the time and had an obsession for drinking any, and all, fluids. All the cans of Juicy Juice and soda were locked up in the basement because of him. At first this man, David, really frightened me; I was afraid he would drink something poisonous. (All noxious substances were locked up tightly, of course. However, David may have been crazy but he wasn't stupid. I had this fear that he would find the keys to these locks and drink furniture polish. But one of my fellow workers told me: "Honey, he's just like us, only more so. He ain't gonna drink his own pee or anything like that.") And we laughed. We never, ever laughed at the people we took care of. We were a merry bunch of people who all got along well and had a lot of fun taking care of these hopeless, helpless people who had few others who cared about them.

There was a man about my age called Joe. He was not retarded. However, he had the strangest behavior I've ever seen and I've seen a lot of them. He looked normal and all that, but he wouldn't stop talking. He talked ALL THE TIME. About anything. As much as we cared about all "our people" we all tried to not take shifts when he would be there. He was high functioning, never had to be taken to the bathroom, fed himself. But he simply wore us down.

Joe's greatest love was the Catholic Church. Since the residents are free, of course, to attend any church or synagogue they chose, we HAD to take Joe to church sometimes. Palm Sunday was approaching and I was the only Jewish employee there; I'm soft-hearted so I took pity on my co-workers and signed up to take Joe to church on Palm Sunday. There was a younger resident who had red hair the color of mine who lived in another group home; the three of us were going to church together.

I said as sternly as I could to Joe: "Listen. You must not say a word once we get in that church. If you say one word, Joe, we will have to leave. You will spoil Ashley's day (my young red-haired friend) and you will spoil your own and maybe even the rest of the people in the church will get upset as well. Do you understand me?" I could see tears forming in his eyes and he nodded, saying yes, he understood.

I drove one of the company's vans to the Catholic Church nearby with Ashley and Joe. And I was a little scared. The worst case scenario would be: Joe would start talking, we would have to leave, Joe and Ashley would both cry and we would upset everybody there.

Joe and Ashley insisted on sitting in the front pew of the church. Anything for peace, I thought as I led them to the front and we seated ourselves there. My fears were mounting... but it was beautiful. A few of Joe's tears trickled down his face; he sat silently; and Ashley sat like an angel, listening to everything the priest said. And for myself, I was transported to a place I'd rarely been. This was not my God, my race of people, my beliefs but it just felt so good to be sitting there.

When the mass was over and we stood to leave, a woman behind me said to me: "You have a beautiful family." I was tempted to say, "They are not my family. This is my job, etc." but instead I just said "Thank you."