REACHING FOR RECOVERY - (PUTTING DOWN THE DRINK) Part 8

What happened in the course of the next few weeks was a pure demonstration of God working in my life through this new friendship. My friend gave me so much of the support I badly needed. I, in turn, became a significant person in helping him with his own coming-out process after he had spent so many years in the closet.

Meanwhile I began to have some conflicts on my job as a social worker. I was becoming more assertive and that rocked the boat. I was also confused and hurt that many of my formerly friendly colleagues seemed to be keeping a cool distance from me. When I approached my supervisor to tell her I was in recovery from alcohol and thought I might need to go to a rehab, all hell broke lose.

She went into a rage and she yelled at me, “I'm sick and tired of hearing about your personal problems!” She showed me no sympathy and seemingly turned me into her personal scapegoat for the next month. I'm not really sure what I might have done to provoke the situation, but what ensued played out my history of allowing myself to be a victim.

What I did next undoubtedly exacerbated the situation. I went three levels above her head, appealing to our kind deputy commissioner. She acted as mediator between my supervisor and myself, serving as surrogate supervisor to me during that period of early recovery.

Granted, my own supervisor undoubtedly had cause to take issue with my work at the time. I'd gotten way behind in my paperwork - those endless client assessments, times forty. I also imagine that my second requested leave of absence within my first fifteen months on the job didn't make her life any easier. (I'd had to take an earlier medical leave following a suicide attempt.)

There was another bizarre work-related twist that happened during my first week of recovery. One morning, as I was approaching my workplace, I encountered one of my schizophrenic clients. This was a woman who, in my experience, had always been totally out of touch with reality. She never called me by name and she rarely even said anything at all.

That day she caught me off-guard. In spite of her disheveled appearance, she approached me on the street as if I were an old friend. She appeared to be mentally clear as a bell when she actually spoke to me! She called me by name when she said, “Mister, you seem to be getting better!”

Wow! I felt as if I had entered an episode of the twilight zone. While my supposedly sane supervisor would literally yell at me when I was in the office, surrounded by my colleagues, this supposedly insane client behaved appropriately and could discern I was on the road to wellness.

Author Davis Aujourd'hui

Humor in my Life---Part 12---Kitty Caper

Oh, the stories I could tell about my time working as a social worker! While many of them had mixed outcomes, they were filled with all-too-human examples of sadness and humor. I'll try to keep the focus on the lighter side of life, though it is often mixed with shades of darkness. Such was the case with a woman who I'll call Bertha.

Bertha was ninety-four years-old. She'd lived a rich life doing unusual work for a woman where she was employed as a lineman. She worked right up until she was eighty. Then she spent five years in retirement until she lost her husband of sixty-two years. It had been a happy life, but things began to disintegrate after that. She was not only going through her grief. She was beginning to become demented.

Bertha and her husband, Hank, loved cats. They loved them so much that they had eight of them. After Hank passed away, Bertha collected a few more. The only problem was that she had forgotten that cats needed to be neutered if they weren't going to multiply like rabbits. Such would become the case with Bertha's cats before the time that I came to know her. By that time, her ramshackle house, filled with a lifetime of possessions and five years of cobwebs, had also become filled with thirty-five cats!

Poor Bertha! Those cats managed to destroy all of her upholstery and Bertha couldn't remember to keep up with cleaning the cat boxes. There was cat poop and urine all over the place! There were also mummies of dead cats wrapped up in newspaper, placed lovingly in her kitchen cabinets. Perhaps she had placed them there prior to intended burials. Unfortunately, she had forgotten to attend to that detail.

Also, unfortunately for Bertha, something had to be done about the cat problem. Her neighbors were complaining about the reek coming from within her house. It was also apparent that she couldn't cope with the kitties, though she didn't have a clue. She thought everything was just fine.

That wasn't the case for me. To enter her house, any sane person would have worn a gas mask. Playing the role of social worker, I was mandated to view the interior of my clients' homes. I was also mandated to carry out the role of protecting the public safety. Those cats had to go!

I called the friendly and helpful SPCA cruelty investigator with whom I had become well-acquainted. It was time for another kitty caper.

Betsy arrived with her van, filled with cat carriers and her snare. Cats would become feral when they were being attempted to be caught. Under conditions such as this, one would also never know whether or not the cats were vaccinated. It would be no laughing matter to be scratched or bitten by a cat that might have rabies!

Betsy and I had to hunt down kitties that hunkered down inside sleeping sofas, under beds, and inside kitchen cabinets. They would dash around the house in a frenzy when they were cornered. It was no laughing matter!

We managed to capture most of them. Who would know what their fate would be? Fortunately, for some of the cats, they managed to escape into the fields surrounding the house as we struggled to get them into the kitty carriers. They would remain free or possibly find neighbors who would adopt them. The next day it was as if it had never happened. Bertha didn't remember that she'd been the caretaker for ten households of cats. Sad, but true. Perhaps this tale is not such a funny one. Better luck next time!

Humor in my Life --Part 13---Trying to save the World

Going back to my early days as a social worker, I'm going to recount a humorous anecdote about my work. Okay, I was all fired up and ready to save the world following my basic training. One of my grand plans was to help the homeless and I had one particular client in mind.

The affectionately dubbed Bear Man had never had any place to stay other than a homeless shelter. There, men would stop in at night, get some tobacco, and crash on cots until the wake-up bell. Then they would have to leave for the streets at seven in the morning.

The Bear Man was well-named. He looked like a grizzly bear with a long, bedraggled beard. He didn't look like he'd had a bath in years and he always wore the same reeking clothes. He became my first mission.

The Bear Man wasn't all there. He was one of those lost souls who heard voices that none of the rest of us could hear. Let's just say that he had his own version of reality. Of course, that's the truth for all of us. We all have incessant chatter in our heads. It's just that most of us don't talk back out loud.

Such was not the case for the Bear Man. While he would often just come into our office to crash and sleep, he would wake up with a start and begin to talk to his imaginary friends.

One fine morning, I asked him if we could talk. Usually he was unreceptive, but that day proved to be my lucky day, in a sense. He said, “Sure, Mr. Aujourd'hui!”

I excitedly invited him into one of our interview rooms and I brightly chirped, “Mr. Bear Man, how would you like to have a nice warm place of your own that you could call home?”

“You mean a pad?” he asked with what sounded like trepidation.

Thinking he was using the colloquial, I responded, “Sure, wouldn't that be nice?”

“Oh man!” he exclaimed. “You know what would happen next?”

I naively responded, “What would that be?”

“The next thing you know, space ships would be landing on the pad and I'd be abducted! No man! That's not for me!”

How could I reason with this. This fledgling caseworker was stumped. I wracked my brain for a meaningful response, but his mind was made up. Apparently, this homeless man had already found a safe pad for himself. Who was I to make a judgment about what home meant to him? I had to let it go.

This would be one of my continuing lessons that I could not save the world. It's not that his basic needs weren't being met. God provides for all of His children. To each, his or her own.

Author Davis Aujourd'hui

Book Part 1 of a Series---"The Misadventure of Sister Mary Olga Fortitude" (Full of laughter)

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