Panacea

To ensure that I can meet the required 40 hours of service I will be pulling what I call “over-time”. This means I will be volunteering on at least two other days outside of my usual Fridays with Cameron. This Wednesday I will be volunteering at a jazz concert where I will be expected to transport the patients to and from the event location, and sit with patients. Also, a couple Sundays from now I will be a volunteer in a Purim party held in one of the other Baycrest complexes. Purim is ofcourse an annual celebration of the deliverance of the Jewish people in the Biblical story of Esther. The story is one of my favourites so I am excited to see Baycrest’s version of the commemoration.

In the time I’ve spent at Baycrest I have just now recused myself of the idea that I could bring something new and perhaps innovative to patient care at Baycrest. The reality is that there are so many volunteers and having the huge responsibility of health care institution Baycrest, and their staff are obliged to do things by the book. This leaves little wiggle room for innovation. But along with the other volunteers I believe my role is to help keep things running by increasing the avidity of the team effort at Baycrest. Sort of like the analogy “two heads are better than one”. So far I haven’t experienced the analogy of “too many hands spoil the broth” because there are always people to help and things that need to be accomplished. For instance, on Friday instead of helping Cameron with his two charges at the evening Shabbat service I decided to ask the recreational therapist for the floor if there was anyone else that I could help bring downstairs to the service. She escorted me around the corner and down one of the many wide hallways to a small lady hunched over in a wheelchair sitting in front of a TV. At that moment new and innovative didn’t matter only ensuring that the client was as comfortable as possible with me especially with the diagnosis of dementia.

One of the volunteers in the afternoon Shabbat service asked us earlier if we would continue volunteering at Baycrest even after our required 40 hours. The truth is I don’t know if it would even be feasible for me to do so for a variety of reasons like cost of travel. But in a perfect world I would love to be able to volunteer at Baycrest long term. And when I think about the life that I want in the future it will have to include service. For me service is a part of my morality-and I talking about service on a large scale like Baycrest. In Jeffery Stout’s article he disagrees that there is a sort of common morality that we as humans share. I believe that people know that helping others is moral but self-centeredness (apart from physical/intellectual limitations) often thwarts are best intentions to act morally in this way. We may protest that we don’t have the time, we don’t know what cause to support and the list goes on. But I think we all feel a little guilty when we pass up the chance to share our abilities in order to ensure the well-being of another.