Usually when people hear the word “volunteer,” they imagine people in matching outfits picking up trash along side the road, or cheering on runners as the labor through a long race. To some, volunteering is a punishment, while to others it’s a form of self-redemption or reward. Some states and communities require inmates or parolees to perform community outreach services in order to reduce their punishment or sentence. Every time I pass a prison chain gang cleaning up litter on the side of the highway, I think to myself, “I wonder what it would be like if more people did stuff like that by choice ...”
The first high school I went to growing up around Chicago had community service requirements. In order to graduate, you had to have logged at least twenty-four community service hours. The program itself was rather unorganized at best, and many students blew it off until it was almost too late. Honestly, I was one of them. I grew up in the Girl Scouts of America, and had quite a bit of experience volunteering in my community. Thanksgiving of my sophomore year, my mom and I spent the day serving Thanksgiving dinner at a soup kitchen/shelter in downtown Chicago. I liked doing all this and feeling like I was helping others, but that couldn’t prevent me from turning into a complacent, lazy, and ultimately moody teenager. My last two years of high school were spent wrapped up in my own “life” and not paying too much attention to the world outside of my circle of friends and acquaintances.
I decided rather late that university and all it’s “four years of beer drinking at frat parties” glory, just wasn’t for me ... so I went to a private massage therapy school. It helped open my eyes up to a whole new perspective on a world full of people in need. I groaned in anxiety when our teachers told us that we had to complete fifty hours of “community outreach” before graduation, twenty-five of which had to be done working with some sort of special population (cancer patients, parents of sick children, etc.). It wasn’t that I dreaded doing work without getting paid; I was more worried about meeting the requirements than anything. I didn’t realize at the time that this would be one school requirement that would better my life as whole, and that the lessons I learned in doing so would affect me for the rest of my life.
I was able to skate through a few of my volunteer assignments like ice on a wood floor. My only dilemma was choosing a specific “special population” to devote the rest of my volunteer time to. My grandmother was fighting cancer at the time, but the place that did cancer-care massage was booked with other people from my school. I’ve always had a soft spot for children, but Ronald McDonald house had more CSMT volunteers than they knew what to do with. So I closed my eyes and pointed to a name on the list. Alexian Brothers Bonaventure House—Chicago, Illinois.
I was excited with anticipation, but riddled with uncertainty of how they would receive me. Bonaventure House is a care facility for the homeless or people on the verge of homelessness, living with HIV/AIDS. They bring people in off the street, get them substance abuse counseling when necessary, and give them the care and support they need so they are able to be fully functioning members of society.
I quickly made friends with some of the employees, but my strongest bonds were with some of the residents. It broke my heart and yet filled it with such joy when I walked through the door each morning to a bunch of smiling faces, all wanting to know if it was their turn to receive a massage that day. I knew deep down in my heart all the terrible things that their disease was doing to them, but with my eyes I saw them overcoming obstacles and living life the best they knew how. I couldn’t help all of them every time I went, but I made a point to make the time count that I was there and the work I did do.
One resident told me, that even after I was gone, he would continue to treat himself to massages because it changed him and he felt like they were healing him from the inside out. Another resident expressed to me that with the regular massages, she was able to sleep better than she had in years. Then there was Rita. Rita was a veteran resident was known for being painfully quiet and reserved. The first few times I worked on her, she laid there and cried, refusing to let me stop, for the last ten minutes of her session. I wasn’t sure if I was really helping her, or if she just saw it as additional therapy. On my last day at the house, Rita came to say goodbye last. She told me that I would never understand just how much our sessions together meant to her, and that when she was back on her feet, she wanted to pursuit a career in massage therapy herself.
Volunteering started out as something I did out of obligation; Bonaventure House changed that, now I know that I really can make a different in the lives of people less fortunate than myself. I learned that a terminal illness doesn’t define who you are; it gives you the chance to look at the world through different eyes. Volunteering doesn’t limit you; it merely requires you to reach outside of yourself to help make the world a better place for someone else.
