An Assistant’s Story

I’d like to start off by saying that one of the most important things I have learned from working at L’Arche is that free time is amazing. Just being able to sleep was such a luxury. I’m not complaining of course, but this aspect of L’Arche really showed me how important mental strength is.
To be honest when I first showed up at the green house in Ontario I kinda of thought the assistants were a bit lazy and selfish when it came to their time off which of course is not true at all. They just took to their time off very seriously and once 2 o’clock came around they were gone.
I showed up eager to get working because I felt I was useless. I felt like they were going very easy on me in terms of my transition to the L’Arche lifestyle. Oh how ignorant I was.
Within a week my lunch break was a beacon of tranquility. I could just lay down and sleep.
All of you so far are probably thinking why on earth would I go all the way to Canada to not sleep.
Hopefully by the end of this you’ll understand why it was all worth it. And why id do it again.
When I was on the plane to Canada I was afraid. Not just nervous but afraid. I had no idea what to expect. I had little to no experience when it can to interaction with people with developmental disabilities and I had worst case scenarios playing over and over in my head about taking care of these crazy people that I as going to live with for the next two months.
I knew my friend James was worried as well. We joked about showing up and not going to larche but instead, going into the city and living out a two month holiday. Eventually we started to question whether we were still joking or not but we held out.
The experience as a whole was quite bizarre. We were put into different houses which at the start I was dissapointed but after a while I was glad. We wouldn’t have been forced to interact in the way we did if we were together. I’ll share with you my story from green house and James can share his story from his.
Green house was great. They were so understanding and easy going and let me recuperate after the journey through the 5 different time zones and they were just lovely, pleasant people.
It took me a while to get to know everyone, particularly one of the core members Hellen. She wasn’t very good with new people. She didn’t do anything bad it’s just she was easily bored with whatever you were talking about unless she knew you. She would ask so many questions about everything and a lot of the time repeated herself but once you asked her one question she throw up her hands and said ‘ugh too many questions. I don’t like questions’.
Part of the fear I had about coming to larche was with the core members themselves. I think we all can agree that when we are forced out of our comfort zone or put with people that are different than the type we are used to, we go into an alert state. A state that is ready to deal with potential danger and threats. These different experiences are the potential threats. Whenever I encountered core members before I would go into the alert state simply because I wasn’t used to it. And I didn’t understand it fully. I saw them as unpredictable and this viewpoint can sometimes overshadow the obviously fact they are still human. They feel everything that I can feel. Now I see this as common sense but before it didn’t fully click with me which I’m sad to say.In daybreak I learned something that I never could have predicted. When I thought of mental disabilities I would think ‘ok their learning capacity is not quite the level of others, they may have memory loss, they can’t express themselves fully’ these were aspects I saw. One core member in my house, Tim, was a popular guy around the property. He had a problem remembering details like the score of a baseball game or the time he was supposed to go to prayer, but apart from that he was like any of the other assistants in the house. In fact it took me a couple hours to realise he was a core member and not an assistant. But Tim’s biggest problem was anxiety. He had a girlfriend and we all know relationships can be stressful but I didn’t imagine that a problem like that, a problem I have had before, was the same problem he was having. It’s was very narrow minded of me at the time but that’s how I saw it.
Added: Another core member joey, he was a character. He would put a smile on anyone’s face but he had a lot of trouble telling people how he felt. If he wasn’t feeling well he would curse and maybe throw things and he couldn’t put words to how he felt. It’s awful. But one thing joey taught me is that you can see the darkest side of someone, but if you’re patient and try your hardest to understand, you end up seeing the brightest happiest guy in the world.

I remember one time he drank a milk shake way too fast and his stomach began to hurt. He couldn’t tell us this because he just wasn’t able. He cursed, threw his glasses, his book, wallet everything. We kept asking him what was wrong, what’s hurting joey. He finally threw up a little on the carpet after half an hour of trying to calm him. He then just looked at me and a big smile went across his face. He took my hand and walked me over to the couch and started showing me pictures of him fishing. He loved fishing.
We all have turmoil that cannot be put to words. Sure we can tell others when we have an upset stomach but inner feelings that cannot be put to words, how do we communicate them? Sometimes we can’t,
I have spoken about a few of the core members but the two lads I got the closest to were David and Peter. Peter wasn’t very vocal but he was obsessed with knowing where everyone and everything was all the time. Before I arrived, they apparently found peter, who by the way is in his late 60s and has the physic of someone in there 100s, was standing on a stool in the kitchen trying to reach a pot that wasnt supposed to be above the fridge. Though he wasn’t very vocal he clearly had strong emotions. His body language was everything. You could tell when he was nervous and anxious and if someone wasn’t there at the time they were supposed to be he would get very agitated. But he had one thing that would put him at ease. A beer. Guiness actually was his favourite drink. Now we weren’t feeding a drinking problem with Peter. He would have one beer every second night and on Fridays he would go out with a French man Philip who was a friend of the property. But Peter and I got very close over the two months. With about two weeks left, the leader of the house, Clara, told me that it would be good to start telling the core members that I’m leaving on the 1st of August just to help them with the transition. So I started telling peter during his morning and evening routines. Peter who isn’t vocal really at all would then say at some point during every day, ‘I’ll miss you jontin’
David then was the star of the house. He was there from the beginning and he had the greatest sense of humor of everyone. He suffered from very bad tremors in his hands which made it difficult to eat. He would always joke about his food still being alive when a bit of bread would go flying across the table. He told me that if I stayed in larche long enough I would start getting the tremors too. But David was the most patient person I have ever met. He never complained about his difficulties or about anyone else. There was one incident where one of the assistants was having some trouble and David would always wait till he as alone with him and ask if everything was ok. He was always concerned about the well being of everyone in the house who he saw as family that he loved unconditionally.
He loves asking questions about you’re family and who’s in it and what they do and their names but he would forget and over time would have to ask again.
I was helping him one morning and he asked ‘how many sisters and brothers do you have’
I told him I had two sisters I told him their names and where they were.
He then asked about my brothers and I responded saying I don’t have any.
I’ll never forget this. He replied ‘you have me brother’.
I will never forget my experience at larche. It is the best time I have ever had while being slightly sleep deprived and I thank everyone who has gotten me involved in it, especially fr Niall and fr fergal. Thank you very much.