In my hospice work, I learned to be an active listener, my job is not to save people or change them or offer them false hope, but to listen. With Christie, I find myself in a different and challenging position. Thanks to Facebook, we are having a dialogue with one another, and it has become important to me, and perhaps, to her.

When I went to see Christie with Red earlier in the week, just before the storm, I assumed she would not be returning to the Mansion, she looked seriously ill, but I think I misjudged her and the Mansion staff. They don’t give up on people there, one staffer told me they want Christie to come back if she wants to take care of herself, and they won’t permit anyone to clean out her room until Christie really makes up her mind about her life.

I am not a staffer or doctor or shrink, but Christie and I have a genuine dialogue going, and I am no longer certain about where Christie will end up, or what Red and I or your letters have to do with that.  Sometime in the coming week, she is going into rehab, and she doesn’t know how long she will be there.  Nor do I know the medical details and problems facing her, that is not for me to know or share.

Her wish is to do whatever she has to do to get back to the Mansion, where she feels comfortable and safe.

To me, she has never been clearer or sounded more determined. Christie told me she hasn’t always followed the doctor’s orders, but she is doing that now. “I have always been shy about myself and content just to be left alone, but I don’t want that anymore,” she messaged me this morning.

What do you have to do to get back to the Mansion?,” I asked her this morning, and she replied: “I have to be able to walk on my own and right now I can’t, plus I have to get rid of a lot of fluid in my legs. I should still be here for most of next week,” she wrote. and then, to rehab.

Then she added in her message, “I think it’s time I stopped hiding. If you go the Mansion please tell them all hello.”

I don’t understand all of Christie’s story, and it’s not my business to know any more than she tells me. It is definitely not my business to tell her what to do. I slipped over the line this morning by telling her: “do what they tell you.”

She is closely following my writings and photos on the blog and appreciates being known and also, coming out in this way, for lack of a better term.

I respect the boundaries of my work – boundaries are important to me, I am not a social worker or physician or Mansion aide  – but I sense Red’s visits to Christie, and our dialogue are giving her strength to make some good and imporstant choices for herself. Only she knows what is possible.

My sense of her, beyond her goodness and warmth, is that she is strong and determined when she wants to be.

I am coming to see that if she wants to return to the Mansion, she may well find a way to do so. I’ve known a number of patients who go to rehab through the therapy work. Some just give up there, some fight hard to get out and recover. Christie has decided to work hard.

I can’t say I fully understand the underlying dynamics of this dialogue, but it is powerful and important to me. Something important is going on inside of Christie’s heart and soul. Red and I are going to see her again Sunday morning. I want to take her portrait.

I am drawn to telling the stories of people whose stories never get told, it is a fundamental element of my blog. All of our stories are important, they are the real news in our lives.

Your letters and messages to Christie (ll S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y. 12816) matter. They show her that people do care about her. I think that is difficult for her to believe.

That may be the most powerful medicine she ever takes. So thanks. If you write her c/o The Mansion, we will see gets your messages wherever she goes.