When Love, Community, and Service Meet

Editor's note: Michael Sigmann wrote this reflection for Emberlight's Direct Care volunteers. We share it here, with his permission, so that others can overhear what this work asks of the people who do it.

In my first three years as a volunteer, while I've learned a great deal about how to care for our residents, I've also learned a great deal about myself.

When I first arrived, I assumed I was here to care for people in the final weeks or months of life. I thought it was about learning how to administer medications, change briefs, and do laundry. Those things are, of course, important. They are tangible expressions of compassion.

Over time, however, I discovered that the deeper work isn't about how well I perform a task. It's about becoming someone who can remain present in the face of another person's vulnerability.

Somewhere along the way, I realized the relationship is reciprocal. I witnessed courage I didn't know existed. I became less afraid of silence. I began to measure time differently, and in the process, I became gentler with myself and others.

I suspect many of us have discovered that we rarely leave the Sanctuary Suites, after saying goodbye to a resident who has passed, as the same people we were when they first arrived at Emberlight.

The threshold has a way of revealing the unhealed parts within us. We often imagine that it is only the resident who is journeying through a profound transformation. Yet anyone who has spent time here knows another truth. The threshold transforms everyone who gathers around it. It reveals our tenderness, our courage, our fears, our desire to help, and our longing to ease suffering. It also reveals our impatience, our uncertainty, our attachments, and the places within ourselves that are still asking to be healed.

One of the paradoxes of this work is that the closer we become to a resident, the more essential it becomes that we remain rooted in community rather than acting alone. Love gives us intimacy. Community gives us perspective. We need both.

There are moments when we are no longer simply volunteers. We become friends. We become witnesses. Sometimes we become part of a resident's chosen family. These are beautiful gifts, but they also ask something of us. They invite us to continually discern the difference between what arises from personal love, what belongs to our role, and what belongs to the wisdom of the community. Holding those realities together isn't always easy. In many ways, it is part of the sacred practice of this work.

Perhaps this is why we gather each week in Care Circle, the standing gathering of our Direct Care volunteers. Not because we have all the answers, but because none of us is meant to carry this work alone. We gather to celebrate, to grieve, to question, to listen, and sometimes to repair. We remind one another that compassion is not reserved only for the person in the bed. It is equally needed for the people gathered around the bed. We are all carrying histories, hopes, fears, and tender places. If we can meet one another with the same patience, curiosity, and grace that we offer our residents, then the circle of care becomes complete.

I've come to believe that Emberlight is not only a place where people are cared for as they die; it is also a place where caregivers are quietly formed.

Sometimes the greatest gift this work offers is not certainty, nor even understanding. It is grace. A grace that arrives quietly as we sit beside another human being. A grace that softens our convictions, widens our compassion, and reminds us that we are all learning how to love at the edge of life's greatest mystery.

If we allow it, that grace not only comforts those we serve. It transforms those of us who have the privilege of serving alongside them.