Feature

On Being Heard

My friend, Doris, was many things to many people, as most women tend to be. She was a mother--eight times over, not to mention various "adopted" children through the years. She was a worker and breadwinner, a churchgoing woman. She was a good-time gal. And sometimes, squeezed in among all her other obligations, she was even a lover. But for all that, I don't think she was "heard" much in this life. Or valued enough for what she accomplished.

Doris worked hard. She raised eight kids alone as well as servicing the needs of numerous other family members. It all seemed to fall on her shoulders. She had only a high school degree and a few secretarial courses. She'd started as a receptionist who knows how many years ago and worked her way up the office support staff ladder to bookkeeper, which is how we met some years later.

I was the personnel/business manager of a large nursing home in the Central District of Seattle, a largely African-American neighborhood for many decades. Working in the Central District in the mid-1990s was a lot like falling into the great Southern literature of our time--a sense of community, of everyone knowing or being related to whomever comes up in conversation. And, at the same time, there was a sense of decay and struggle. For every step forward, there was a general resigned belief that there would be two steps back. This was Doris' culture and community.

Doris arrived for her interview at the end of the business day, a middle-aged, rather heavy black woman with wire-framed glasses and salt-and-pepper hair. Her eyes were slightly eager and anxious, but with an underlying warmth and kindness. We sat at ease with each other, two women tired at the end of a long day. I described some of the job responsibilities. She was honest that computers were new to her, but expressed a willingness to learn. Mostly, we talked about the people at the home--the employees, the management, and the residents. She was a shoo-in. Her perceptions were accurate, straight-on honest without being mean, and funny. Halfway through the conversation, I knew I wanted to hire her.

Then, in the Catch-22 fashion of nursing homes, the administrator suddenly had grave doubts about Doris (formerly a paragon of all virtues). Doris had so many family obligations (do we really want to deal with that?). She wasn't trained in computerized bookkeeping, after all. It took little time to root out the true issue--Doris' salary request of $10 per hour was seen as too high. It took a week of meetings, discussions and counter-arguments, but I finally got approval for the salary and even got her health insurance thrown in for free.

Victory? I guess so, but it bothered me. I felt angry at the administration's reluctance to pay a 55-year-old woman a living wage. I was quietly contemptuous of their lame excuses for balking. Personally, I thought the wage was insultingly low, but I also knew the limitations of the budget and this employment community. Office work, especially in nursing homes, was basically seen as "women's work" and the salary scale set accordingly. I was angry because Doris should have been welcomed back as a valued resource, not made to feel like a beggar when laying out her salary needs.

As we worked together, I came to know her life, her ups and downs. There were many of them, what with eight grown kids and their babies as well as her invalid grandmother. With little or no resources, Doris found a way to help one child finance a house, another to start a foster-care home, another with child care problems. She sure as hell didn't solve these problems with money. Plainly said, she didn't have any. But she found funding sources or ways around down payments, helped guide her children through mazes of government and corporate red tape. And when all else failed, Doris was there to hold them and urge them to fight again another day.

She brought these unique skills to work as well, and she provided as much comfort to our residents as any highly paid R.N. When Mr. R. would wander down every three weeks or so to once again demand, "I'm a veteran and WHAT AM I DOING HERE?!?" Doris patiently reviewed his circumstances with him until he was reassured. She never talked down to him--you'd have thought she was saying "Hey" to the most respected man in town--genially inquiring about his wife (whom he didn't always remember).

The families benefited as well. Doris knew the personal history of every resident and his/her "outside" caregiver. As family members came to pay each month after visiting their relative, Doris would let them talk and always finished by telling them what caring, wonderful people they were. Doris knew how to "validate" people long before the term became chic.

Just as I left this job, Doris' annual TB test showed she had converted (tested positive for TB antibodies). It's not the most serious thing in the world. Normal practice is to follow a course of medication for two to three months, after which most people are fine. However, the meds must be properly monitored or they can cause great damage. Doris began complaining of tiredness, pains in her abdomen, a sense of general unwellness.

Despite talking about her symptoms with the same people who provided the TB meds, Doris was treated for depression. By the time the medical establishment set aside their presumptions that older women's medical complaints are neurotic and emotional, her liver was gone. She was put on the transplant list. By the time a liver came through, her brain and other organs were severely damaged from the toxins her body couldn't process. The doctors said they couldn't "waste" a liver on someone in her condition. She died six months after I left the home.

I'm still angry. I'm angry that Doris often felt unacknowledged and unappreciated in this life. Nothing I could say could wipe away a lifetime of dismissal of this woman's creativity. Finding money where there is none so your kids continue to believe that life improves instead of decays; connecting with emotionally needy people instinctively, making their day (possibly their life) better in the process; creating social connections which are intangible but allow a society to be a community instead of a jungle--it is this, a woman's creativity that goes unrecognized and unvalued every day.

I'm angry that no one heard Doris when she most needed to be heard. I'm angry that her life is gone because society often dismisses women's voices. I'm angry that her death so symbolizes her frustrations in life, instead of those small victories she was able to claim. She should have been heard. And I'm angry and sad that I never got to say good-bye, to say any of this to Doris. So, I raise my voice (infinitesimally small, but deeply sincere) and say, "I hear you, Doris. I value having known you. I miss you deeply. I miss you deeply."

By Honora Wade.
Honora Wade is a Systems Trainer for a law firm in Seattle, WA, as well as an artist, actress and creative writer. Send compliments or complaints, or just contact her at honorawade@yahoo.com.