When I first met Bill, a patient on the Brain Injury Unit diagnosed with
alcoholism, he was agitated and throwing punches, one that nearly landed
on my head. Today he is calm and quite sweet. As an occupational therapist,
I am seeing Bill. He wanted to get cleaned up after breakfast, but he did not
have any clean clothes to put on his clean body. In fact, he didn’t own any
clothes. He was wearing hospital scrubs and some old shirt over those. I
offered to wash the clothes he was wearing and then went to find him some
clean clothes from the hospital’s donated clothes closet. I brought back
clothes including three sweaters and he chose the brown sweater with the
front zipper. At the end of our hour together, he looked at me and said, “You
must be tired” (from the therapy session). I looked at him and said, “You
know Bill, I was really tired when I got here this morning, but I do not feel
tired at all now. You have made my day.” I felt renewed.

Later that afternoon, I brought Bill more clean clothes. At that moment, he
looked at me, our eyes met, and I felt “seen.” The truth in me was seen. He
said, “Thank you” with a sincerity not of the ego, not out of obligation or
manners. I was floored. We sat together in silence. He thanked me again.
Then I thanked him for helping me to feel the peace of LOVE within myself.
He said with surprise, “I did that?” So today, I still see his wild, bulging eyes conveying the peace of LOVE.

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