30 Nov Everything’s Different . . . Nothing’s Changed

A few weeks ago, I moved something on a bulletin board and discovered a small calendar underneath. It was opened to March 2020. 

March 2020, the month COVID-19 officially became a pandemic, the month calendars suddenly became irrelevant. In the space of a week, we went from posting signs asking everyone to wash their hands to closing the office. The volunteer training scheduled to start March 17 was canceled. Our summer fundraiser, canceled. All support groups and meetings, suspended.

Experienced Goods closed. Most BAH staff started working from home. If someone had said then the store would be closed for four months, that those staff members wouldn’t come back to 191 Canal Street for fifteen months, would we have believed them?

Here’s the thing about the work we do: It doesn’t stop. People still heard the words “poor prognosis” from their doctor in April 2020. People lost loved ones to Covid or the opioid crisis or just “everyday” accidents and illnesses in May 2020, leaving them bereft. Headlines about Covid patients needing ventilators made people think twice about their end-of-life wishes in June 2020.

So the work went on, pandemic or not. How we worked, by necessity, changed.

As we, like offices everywhere, wrestled with working from home, Lars worried that bereavement clients wouldn’t want to meet on Zoom. It was too impersonal, too disconnected. By March 2021, there were three weekly grief support groups meeting online, with another added in May because of demand. Clients met one-on-one with Lars or a volunteer outside, or on Zoom, or over a phone call. Was it perfect? Surely not. Was it enough, what we could offer at that moment? Surely yes.

Some volunteers couldn’t risk being in clients’ homes, and some clients didn’t want anyone visiting anyway. Why take the chance? Instead, volunteers went grocery shopping, picked up prescriptions, took laundry to the laundromat, shoveled snow, hauled out the trash cans. Three hospice care clients had to move during the pandemic; Patty and John found volunteers to help get them packed up and into their new spaces.

Hospice volunteers who felt comfortable continuing in-person visits attended safe-practices training, learning new protocols designed for a pandemic. Patty made up kits of face masks and shields, hand sanitizer, gloves, thermometers and Covid questionnaires, constantly updating them as the pandemic ebbed and flowed, and our understanding of the coronavirus changed. 

Taking Steps Brattleboro could no longer do tabling at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, so Don held weekly informational sessions on Zoom, then teamed up with the Vermont Ethics Network to train a new group of volunteers using a completely online model, a first for BAH. 

It hasn’t been easy, or at times very satisfying. It has been exhausting and stressful and seemingly endless. It has shown us our limits and thrown the need for our services into sharp relief. It has proved that what we do matters. That planning for the end of life helps. That having a support network as this life fades helps. That having someone to share our grief with helps. 

Stephen Sondheim died a few days ago, leaving behind so many great lyrics, but this line from Follies has been running through my head:

I got through all of last year, and I’m here

However hard it has been, and whatever challenges remain, we’re still here. To our program coordinators, who persevered with rethinking how we can provide our services; our incredible volunteers, who stepped up at every opportunity; our Experienced Goods staff, who keep us afloat with style; and the community at large that continues to support our work, we can’t thank you  enough. Thank you, all the same.

Hilary Farquhar

PS: The title is also courtesy of Mr. Sondheim, from Company: “Everything’s different/Nothing’s changed/Only maybe slightly rearranged.” (Sorry/Grateful)