Sylvie would love to get some get well cards. She doesn’t think she can handle letters right now, but she will in a few days. She asked me to let her pen pals and friends know where she is and tell them she would love to hear from them: She is at the Washington Center For Rehabilitation And Healthcare, 4573 State Route 40, Argyle, N.Y. 12809, under her full name, Alicia Bussee. I have no idea what is wrong with her, or when or if she will be returning to the Mansion. She did cry when she saw me and asked me to give her a big hug, our first.

At the Mansion, I’m a volunteer, and not a staffer, and I respect the difference and adhere to  the boundary. Today, I went to the Mansion to bring Sylvie some stamps and envelopes. I am her envelope and tote bag and stamp supplier, even thought she hides them or loses them and never ever has any.

Last month, looking in her room at her request, we found 1,000 stamps in a dresser drawer. She lost most of her tote bags when it was discovered she was using most of them for garbage. She has four or five left.

Sylvie’s room is even more chaotic than my desk on its worst day, and when I knocked and saw the door to her room was open this morning, I knew something was wrong. Her books and letters and many notebooks were stacked neatly in piles and off of the floor.

Her room had been cleaned up  by the staff, all the garbage was thrown away and everything was in its place.

I knew what this meant: Sylvie was gone.

Something had happened. At the Mansion, rooms this organized usually mean the occupant is somewhere else. In the hospital. Transferred to a nursing home. Or dead.

Several people I have been writing about at the Mansion are gone, they left this week. I did not get to say goodbye. I will probably never know where they went.

As a volunteer, I am not entitled to know where they have gone or why, and I don’t ask.

I don’t want to push the aides into an  uncomfortable spot, they are not supposed to divulge any medical information. I won’t take advantage of them. As a hospice volunteer, I learned early on to expect on any given day to show up and find the patient gone. I’m used to this, I prefer it. I am used to it by now.

I  have a strict rule that I don’t visit Mansion residents when and if they go to other facilities. It’s a boundary. Burnout is the great danger for volunteer work, and I don’t want to burn out, driving all over this big state, following people on their journey to the edge of life. I have my own work and my own life, and I won’t sacrifice them. Sylvie is different.

Health care is not my job. Sometimes, if the circumstances are right, somebody will let me know the person I am visiting is gone, or drop an indirect clue, if someone is dead. But change is no big deal to the staff, they see it all the time.

They told me Sylvie was gone when I came to the office to ask if she was okay.  I thanked them and left the room. The residents will tell me anything they know, and I learned from one of them where she was.

The aides know I will figure it out.

I don’t play favorites at the Mansion, but I am quite close to Sylvie, I have been supplying her addiction to letter writing for a long time now, we are connected to one another. She loves to tell me her story, and we talk about her faith, which is deep. She is a Jehovah’s Witness.

Sylvie is always busy, always reading, writing, handing me letters to mail, expecting me to sort out the area codes. Sometimes, she sends money to people she shouldn’t be sending money to, and I give her the envelopes back.

She is quite regal, she can’t be bothered with area codes. When I see her, she hands me a stack of letters to mail, much like a Queen giving a steward a royal chore.

I am also a supplier of her hats, which she loves to wear.

When I came into her room at the Rehab Center this afternoon – I left Red behind on this trip – she couldn’t believe that I had come just for her. She was lying in bed watching TV. She had none of the famous Sylvie paraphernalia – tote bags, letters, notebooks, journals, religious texts.

I couldn’t hug her much because of all the stuff in between us, she looked clear and composed, as she always does.

When I last saw her at the Mansion a few days ago, she was shouting that she was in great pain.

Then she seemed all right. Today,  she told me she ended up in an ambulance going to Albany, and then in a day or so in another ambulance taking her to Argyle.

She said walking was too painful for her, but she was starting to use a walker in the rehab facility. Her aide, she said, was young and had a beard, but she was nice.

She said she had no idea why her back was hurting so much, no one had told her. Perhaps, I suggested, they don’t know.

Sylvie stays calm and composed in almost any circumstance. She has an inner peace and an inner strength. I remember when the Mansion residents had to go to another facility when the Mansion shut down for a month, Sylvie was the calmest. She just kept up with her work.

I sat down and we talked for about a half an hour.

I asked what I could bring for her from the Mansion. She said she wanted her address book (I knew there was absolutely no chance of my finding it amidst all the clutter in her room). She would like one of her hats – she always wears a hat (I see she put a towel over her head), and perhaps, if some cards come, some stamps and envelopes.

I said goodbye, we hugged again, and she thanked me for coming.

I left her room and looked for somebody to tell me something.  They aren’t supposed to say much to visitors there either. I always feel the old reporter blood stirring in my veins, I take it personally when people don’t tell me things I need to hear.

Sylvie looked sharp and comfortable to me, but I know she must have been in great pain to have been taken to Albany in an ambulance. They don’t do that for headaches.

Walking, she says, is another matter. We both know that if she can’t walk, she can’t come back to the Mansion.  I found an aide in the hallway, a young man who seemed busy and looked right through me.

I put my reporter hat on and mumbled something about working at the Mansion, which is true, and when, I asked sweetly – nobody suspects an older man of anything – when we could pick Sylvia up and bring her home.

He said she would  be at the Rehab center for awhile, they didn’t know yet how mobile she would be. Tonight, he said, she would be going to the dining room on a walker, which sounded encouraging to me.

I went back to the Mansion and Tia and I spent a half hour searching her room for her address book. As I suspected, we couldn’t find one. We even found her Mansion walker and it wasn’t there.

I did find a religious books she loves and some leather journals I got for her. I found one of her favorite hats. I’ll get more envelopes and stamps tomorrow, and bring them all to her. If people send her cards (and short letters, perhaps), she’ll have stationery to reply to, and I’ll get the letters mailed.

That would be great, she would like get well cards, she could use a hand, it must be frightening to her to be separated from everything familiar.

The address is Alicia Sylvie Bussee, Washington Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare, 4573 State Route 40, Argyle, N.Y., 12809.