Volunteering

By Diana Daniele

Volunteering

 The astringent smell of Lysol, no doubt used as much to mask the urine odor as to keep the place clean, assaulted my senses as I stepped inside the rehab center. A small chime announced my entry, but the woman at the front desk, who was poring over some kind of flow chart, didn’t even look up. I grinned in her direction, anyway, hoping a smile would hide my substantial fear of being in this place. It reminded me of the nursing homes I’d visited as a Christmas-caroling Girl Scout. This was a place where, given their druthers, no one would choose to be.

But I had. My psychiatrist had told me I was ready to work, not as the paid professional publicist I’d once been, but as a volunteer reader. Designed to get me out of the house so I could rejoin the world in a safe and meaningful way, this volunteer opportunity was a form of occupational therapy. I had chosen to work with senior citizens because of the kinship we shared, specifically, the pathos of our experience with invisibility. Mental illness is an invisible disease, and, in my ongoing struggles with depression and anxiety, I often felt invisible. Likewise, the elderly often feel unseen and unheard, particularly when they are living in care facilities. Sometimes the old and infirm are too weak or uninterested to vote. What’s more, they no longer engage in travel planning, fashion trends or any real consumer spending. These activities are an integral part of the American lifestyle and at the heart of its zeitgeist. Belonging is a basic and crucial human need, and many of the elderly and I had ceased to belong to The World in the way we once had.

This was all good theoretically, but the truth was I didn’t really want to leave my safe house, or the sanctity of my bed, to read to postoperative seniors at a rehab facility. For starters, I couldn’t fathom allowing myself the luxury of getting ready. Indeed, I actually feared the shower, which to most people sounds crazy. But if your existence is defined by self-loathing, such anxiety is a natural outcome. The hot water pouring from the shower head would eventually feel good -even relax me- and given I felt unworthy of such rewarding, spa-like luxuries, my avoiding the shower made perfect sense. The same held true for styling my hair or putting on make-up; I didn’t deserve to be pretty. With vanity goes sanity my therapist often chirped, fruitlessly encouraging me to take pains with my appearance. The topic of self-care was a recurrent theme in our weekly sessions, no doubt top of mind for her because of the way I presented - not a stitch of make-up, and dirty bangs that fell in clumps.

But there was something I did want to be: well.

So today I’d ignored my racing heart and swirling, negative thoughts. I’d taken a shower, made a half-hearted attempt at blow-drying my hair and applying make-up, and arrived on the facility’s tree-lined residential street with time to spare. That was fortunate, because I’d stayed in my white Honda Pilot for a good 15 minutes before I was able to summon the courage to open the door and get out.

Now that I was inside, I had to fight the urge to turn around and leave. Not only because I was afraid to be the reader, with all eyes on me, but because the antiseptic hospital smell that greeted me reminded me of my self-imposed stay on the psych ward at UCLA. Perhaps most importantly, I wanted to walk out because I could, while the stooped, white-haired patients dotting the long hallway in front me, either on walkers or in wheelchairs, decidedly could not. No one there seemed under 75 years old, and some could have been decades older. There were vacant looks on many of the worn and saggy faces. Bespectacled women outnumbered men three to one. Translucent skin showed blue veins and liver spots, and a few patients had neglected to put in their dentures.

I shook my head, as if to dislodge the panicked thoughts, and started to make my way down the long hallway. Up ahead, I spied a nurse wearing navy scrubs and scuffed white sneakers bustling out of a patient’s room. She was olive-skinned and petite, dark hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. Balancing a half-eaten breakfast tray in one hand and pushing a vitals caddy with the other, she communicated competence and efficiency. Regret stabbed me in the chest. She is as I used to be, I thought wistfully.

“Looking for a family member?” the nurse asked crisply, as she came closer. I inhaled and opened my mouth, but just as in a nightmare, no words came out. Clearing my throat, I began again. “I-I’m looking for Margaret, the Activities Director?” The nurse smiled in recognition and pointed toward a doorway a few feet down the opposite wall.

 “Good morning, my beautiful people,” boomed Margaret. I recognized her charming Irish lilt immediately from our phone interview. She was at the front of the room in what was called the Activities Lounge, according to the placard on the wall. Margaret was a smiling, commanding woman, stout and in her early 60s. She had impressive voice projection skills, a necessity for dealing with the elderly. She was young for this crowd and had great energy; I liked her immediately. To Margaret’s left was a large whiteboard, upon which were printed the activities for the day in bold block letters. “Here is Diana, my friends, our new volunteer,” she announced, gesturing toward me, and signaling for me to join her at the front. “She will be reading to you during our story hour this morning.”

With the Margaret-pre-approved biography of JFK tucked under one arm, I made my way up and sat down on the stool she pushed toward me. I looked out at the sea of wrinkled faces and took a deep breath. I said a prayer that my voice would be steady -not-squeaky- and that I would successfully pump up the volume, all while remembering to enunciate. As I started to read from the life story of a great American who had been President of the United States when my audience had been in their prime, I knew I had taken my first step to belonging.

            One woman had come up to me as I was gathering up my things and admired my Louis Vuitton purse. “I used to have one of these,” she said, her shaking fingers stroking the leather strap of my shoulder bag. “I worked at the White House during the Bush Administration.” I looked int her lined face, and took in her high cheekbones and pert, turned-up nose. It was not hard to picture this woman in her attractive, competent years, a vital part of The World, serving at the pleasure of the President.

As I walked out the door and into the hallway, I ran into the same nurse, pushing a patient’s wheelchair. The woman inside had been at story hour, and I smiled at her. “You remind me of my daughter,” she told me in a quavery voice. I took this as a compliment until she said, more querulously, “She never calls me. I don’t even know where she is. She used to live in New York. She --” My heart ached, until the nurse interrupted, pressing down on her patient’s shoulder.

“          Helen, your daughter was just here last week. She brought you that lovely hydrangea in your room.” The nurse gave me a look, and I realized the woman must suffer from dementia.

Driving home afterward, I was filled with relief and, yes, a bit of joy. I had done what I’d set out to do. But just as I was mentally high fiving myself, I heard another voice, nagging and judgmental. “Why are you acting like this is such a big deal? Compared with what normal, working people do, what you did was nothing.” Shame bubbled up inside me from the infinite cauldron that lived inside my chest. But I fought back, reminding myself that today had been both an answered prayer and a merciful reminder that there was hope; my mental health journey was beginning to be punctuated by feelings of joy that could miraculously find me amid the pain. I had rejoined the land of the living; I was visible.

 In the same way depression creeps in, it recedes.

The moments of joy working as a volunteer were the first cracks of light that appeared in my otherwise dark and lonely existence. I’d been often told, over the years, that I am an “old soul.” So, it was fitting that my experience with the elderly would become the first, important step on my journey back to my old -and hopefully improved- self, hollowed out, as I had been, by the humbling struggles along the way.

Diana Daniele is a writer and literary publicist living in Los Angeles. “Volunteering" is an excerpt from her memoir-in-progress entitled Out of the Dark: A Memoir of Migraine and Madness. Daniele is also an advocate for the destigmatization of migraine and mental health. In June 2021 she served as an influencer for the international social media campaign “Shades for Migraine.”