Indulging myself

I splurged last week. A small splurge, but on what appears to be a totally unnecessary purchase. I think of it, however, as an important indulgence. What kind of splurge inspired this posting? I bought a skinit for my work phone.

I could argue that I needed it to distinguish my phone from all the other phones on those rare occasions when we're all in the office, but that isn't the reason I bought it. (Although I think that was part of the reason I gave myself.) I could say it was because there was a special deal with free shipping, but if I hadn't bought one I would have not only not paid for shipping, but I would have also not paid to buy it. My real reason for buying it was that I could choose and upload my own picture.


In the past four months, we've had a number of family simchas. We've also had one very difficult, untimely loss. The picture on my skinit is a joyful, smiling photo from one of the simchas. I can't look at it without smiling. I look at it and remember how happy we all were. I look at it and I remember that the pain of our loss was also a part of the day. The photo reminds me that a month after one of the worst days in our lives, we celebrated one of the happiest.

When I see this photo as I'm working, I'm reminded that all of us have mixtures of love and loss, celebration and loneliness in our lives. It reminds me not to take my blessings for granted. It reminds me that joy may be followed by sorrow and then again, God willing, by joy. The photo helps me remember that I want to work to live, not live to work. It reminds me to turn off the phone when the day or the week is over.


The photograph is not a talisman. It won't protect me from the pain that comes with my work or the pain that comes with life. But I hope it will protect me from becoming callous or indifferent. I hope it will always make me smile. When I think about the joy the photo gives me, it is clear that this splurge was not an extravagance and not really an indulgence, but another important weapon in my battle against burnout.

Elul

One of my favorite things to do at this time of year is take my shofar with me to work. From the beginning of Elul until Yom Kippur, I have it with me. I sound it for my Jewish patients. I let the nursing homes where I work know what it is, why I have it, and that I will visit any Jewish resident so that they can hear the sounds of the shofar. In a nursing home with a younger, more alert, special needs population, the activity department and I schedule a program so that the Jewish residents can prepare for the New Year.

In a job where almost everyday provides the unexpected, I never know what to expect once I take out the shofar. I do a lot of education with staff and residents at this time of year. I never sound the shofar without making sure that everyone around me knows what I'm doing -- especially when I'm on a dementia unit.

Sometimes there are moments of serendipity, of grace. I'm in a nursing home doing a spiritual assessment on a new patient. We're meeting in a corner of the activity / dining room. The activity director, spotting my kipah, comes over to tell me that they are making "cards for the Jewish New Year." I am able to respond not only by coming over to meet the residents and talk about the meaning of the New Year, but by saying, "I have a ram's horn in the trunk of my car. May I go get it so that your residents can hear the sound of the New Year?" And while I have it, a nurse mentions a bed-bound Jewish resident down the hall and I am welcomed into her room so that she can hear the sound of the shofar. "Her family will be so happy when we let them know that you were here."

I'm visiting one of my Jewish patients. We sit in her room and I talk to her about the season. There's no response today, no eye contact, no acknowledgment that I'm present. I take out the shofar and blow it. Her head jerks up, her eyes open, and, for a moment, she's there.

Another patient, another home - my patient is a 100 + year old Holocaust survivor. We visit in front of her room, by the nurses' station where she sits each day. I take out the shofar -- Tekiah -- and the woman sitting next to her in the hallway glares at me and loudly asks, "What are you trying to do - wake the dead?"

Another survivor. Not yet my patient, but when I talk on the phone about hospice with her out-of-state son, he asks that I take in the shofar so that she can hear it. It turns out she's in a different place in her dementia. The shofar scares her. When I greet her in Hebrew or Yiddish she gets agitated and motions me to be silent. She responds to me and converses only when I greet her in Polish. Unfortunately my Polish extends only to "good morning," "how are you," and "thank you," but that doesn't stop her from taking my hand and talking to me - as long as the shofar is not in sight.

Once again it's Elul. This morning I opened my living room cabinet and took out my shofar. I don't know what the next month will bring, but I do know that for my Jewish patients it will include the sounds of the shofar as, together, we prepare to either close the Book of Life or to greet the New Year.

Again with the yarmulke . . .

This was my weekend to be on-call. There are a couple of differences in my on-call "look." Weekends on-call are the only time I wear jeans to work, although in the summer my weekend clothes are closer to my weekday work clothes. The big difference is that on Saturday on-call I don't wear a kipah. It's funny - as easy as it is to forget my kipah when it's on, I'm hyper-aware of its absence when I'm not wearing it. I almost feel as though I'm going to work naked; missing a vital part of my "uniform."

I walked into a facility yesterday to do some on-call visits. I said "hello" to a resident I often talk with on my way in and out. She looked at me and said, "You're not wearing your little . . ." and pointed to my head. "Right," I said, "my yarmulke. Well, I don't wear it when I'm working on the Sabbath." I didn't go into a lot of detail, simply explaining that Jews generally don't work on the Jewish Sabbath, so when I'm making on-call visits on the Sabbath I don't wear it.

I didn't want to get into an entire discussion on marat ayin (how things appear; not wanting to mislead a fellow Jew) and why I leave the kipah off. Although I consider myself an observant Jew, I am not a halachically observant Jew. In addition to working on some Shabbatot, there's the car I drive to the nursing home, the pen and paper I'm using to write up my visit notes, the BlackBerry that I use to check patient details, and the myriad of other non-Shabbasdik things involved in patient visits.

I leave the kipah off on Shabbat because I don't want to be a public Jew on that day. I don't want to advertise my religion. On a Shabbat on-call visit I just want to advertise the hospice presence. Of course, it's on my on-call days with no kipah, working in buildings where we have other chaplains during the week, and with staff who aren't familiar with me that I am most often mistaken for the hospice nurse. This weekend was no exception. "Yes, I think it's alright to skip a PPD on a hospice patient," I say, "but I'm not the nurse, I'm the chaplain. Let me call my nurse and get an answer to your question."

After a day on-call, disguised as "just another chaplain," it's a pleasure to put my kipah back on and enter the new work week as the Jewish chaplain.