The Unspeller Revisited

From the archives...

In my former life, I was a case manager, working with people struggling with mental illness. I had a favorite (yes, I had favorites!) client named Paul.

He was about sixty-five at the time and the spitting image of Yoda. Only his head wasn't quite as wide... but he was very short and super cute in an odd sort of way. His look was not the only odd thing about Paul.

He showed up one cold night at Regions Hospital and ended up in the behavioral health unit (that's the pc term for the psych ward). It turned out he'd been homeless most of his life and had never gotten caught up in "the system" before the ripe old age of 65.

When I got him an apartment through the program I worked for, he had no idea how to live in it. He lined things up all over the floor in rows. He put ham and milk in the cupboard and cereal in the fridge. He opened the windows in the freezing winter and never locked the door.

I love this guy.

The quirkiest thing about Paul is that he carried around a notebook and wrote things as you said them to him. When we met for the first time at the hospital, I said "Hi, I'm Heather." He wrote (VERY slowly and VERY carefully) HEATHER in his book, and then pronounced me "Header."

He sat quietly then and repeated over and over "No H, No E, No A, No T, No H, No E, No R."

I didn't know what to do. I had been unspelled! I soon learned that Paul did this with EVERYTHING anyone said to him. He unspelled it.

"Paul, you need to lock your door." He would respond, "How do you spell that?" It would take a long time to spell it out, waiting for him to scribble out each letter, but he would do it right there, standing in the hall. Then after it was spelled out in the notebook, we'd stand there a while longer while Paul unspelled it (out loud).

No L, no O, no C, no K.... and so it went.

(He never did lock the door.)

Yeah, it was hard to wait during this process sometimes. But I didn't get impatient with our long conversations filled with written and then unspelled words. Not because I'm such a saint, but because Paul is so endearing. It's amazing what you can learn when you step out of your comfort zone and into someone else's troubled life.

(originally posted 10/25/07)
________________
Yesterday was a historical day. Huge. Many people are ecstatic. Many are disappointed.

I've been a bit quiet and overwhelmed these last political months. Watching heated debates between candidates made me a bit nauseous. Hearing passionate and sometimes hateful opinions over which party is right also made me a bit nauseous. The commercials definitely made me completely nauseous.

Now that the election is over, I'm thinking a lot about what happens next.

So much good can happen when we set ourselves aside and act in love. But these last months that whole idea seemed to fly right out the window, holding hands with tact and soaring far away from our country. In it's place we were left with a whole lot of pride and even more slander. And somehow we accepted that, holding to the idea that we have the right to think and say hateful things if we're scared or if we feel challenged.

Now that the election is over, I might be insane for hoping that we can move forward without so much division. But I still hope.

My old client Paul was on to something. Sometimes we need to take a good hard look at ourselves and unspell a few things. Maybe remove a little pride or a tone of arrogance. Or maybe sift out some hate, finding humility in the truth that we're no better than the people we disagree with, since in the end we're all the same. We're in a process, learning as we go and maybe even fighting a lot of the same battles. Yes, a bunch of silly screw ups who need grace are we.

This might be a crazy idea, but maybe we can use our passionate feelings and energy to do something rather than just saying something. Maybe we can even step out and get to know people who are nothing like us, opening our world views, and focusing on what we can do to love people that need our help.

Just an idea.