Driving up the hill to the Manchester Infirmary, I take a deep breath, bracing myself for what I am about to face. Despite the difficulty, I pray I will never become numb to it. I see multiple mentally challenged women wandering aimlessly as if they’re “on automatic.” Men in wheelchairs watch this same scene day after day. People are moaning, calling out and howling as others sit silent.  Blind patients quietly observe as they hear the familiar tenor of the mentally ill, and pained silence of those too frail to do anything other then lay curled in their beds, only moving to turn their heads to the gaze of a visitor. In this unlikely setting, on a hill on the outskirts of Mandeville, I have had the gift of witnessing great hope, love, and faith to unforeseen degrees.

The infirmary houses about 100 patients for in-house care. Some are there for short-term care, waiting a few months for surgery, but many are there for long-term care, some for over a decade. A few need twenty-four hour professional health-care, but many are there because it seems as if they have nowhere else to go, financially unstable without family or friends. A local describes it as a place for “the truly outcast of society.”

I enter the second female ward to see Ms. Morgan, a woman in her seventies that has lived here for five years. Each day she sits perched up on her bed, never leaving her spot as she only has one leg and no wheelchair; her daily reality is repetitive, with little alteration and minimal stimulation. After a joyful greeting, Ms. Morgan proceeds to go on about what she has been hearing on her small, static, radio all morning. Provided with little emotional or spiritual care other than my visits, she won’t spend an ounce of energy on self-pity, exerting herself instead on worrying about floods in Pakistan, if the sick woman curled-up in the next bed received a spoon with dinner, or even my own transportation home after visiting.

Ms. Morgan smiles and lights up the room as she watches me attempt to sing songs with another patient, Ms. Lacey, two beds down from her. Communicating that I don’t know these Jamaican songs is useless; I must follow Ms. Lacey blindly, mimicking the shape of her mouth and attempt to follow. We become thrilled with the mutual eagerness to understand each other across cultural barriers. Each song ends with a long, loud, drawn-out, “Aaamennn!” Then Ms. Morgan teases Ms. Lacey for mixing up the words to the song.

These moments and people are what ground me while I visit the infirmary. Whether it is holding a frail hand, putting all of my energy into a long hug, or jokingly sassing an elderly man when he flirts, I always feel needed and wanted there. Yet, while I am ‘working’ and giving of myself, there is mutuality; I am learning gratitude, hope, and faith. An unconventional job of visiting the sick, elderly, and dying, leads to a conventional lesson: it is only in caring for others that I will understand how to live my own life with love, beauty, and vivacity.

Jennifer Martin is a Passionist Volunteer serving in Jamaica, W.I.

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