Favorites

My sisters both accuse me of being my father's favorite child. (How is this a fault of mine, I don't know. This seems to be a choice he would have made, not me.) I never tried to be a favorite, and I honestly don't think my father had one. I do seem to remember being a favorite of various teachers throughout school, and I don't remember doing anything to achieve that status, except maybe doing the homework on time.

I think it's interesting that 'being favored' had such negative feelings attached to it. There was something wrong with it or it was the favored persons fault, and not the favorer. Which is why I vowed at age 10 to never to have any type favorite. I would be fair minded and see everything for it's individual beauty and value.

Why then, do I keep having favorites among my hospice clients. I suppose it's just as it was when I was young, I didn't try to like one person more than the other, I just did. I didn't want to have favorites, or to really like my hospice clients because I didn't want it to be too hard for me when the died. The truth of the matter is, I am helping to take care of someone at a very intimate time in their life. They are preparing for the end of it and to some that means embracing everyone around them, including me. For others it means, shutting out everyone one who is not essential...like me. How could I not embrace back those who share their last moments with me. Is it so wrong to briefly love a near stranger back at time so short and dear to them?

One of my first favorites, J., always brought a smile to my face with the way his eyes lit up when he saw me. Another was always concerned with me working too hard, and another held me close and told me I was his guardian angel mere days before he died.

There is a fluidity to these favorites, one passes away and another client starts to warm up to me, or we have a moment that gives us that moment of understanding. I don't choose them, they choose me I think.

Is really a favorite, or some sort of intimacy that breaks down our decades of protective walls and borders. The time of those walls has passed for the dying and being let in can feel like you've been favored, chosen, or become a friend of sorts.

I hope I can honor that giving of spirit that those certain clients feel they can share with me, and I will think of them as favorites, without shame.