it’s like this

Today I begin telling the four people I’ve been supporting as “job coach” that I will be leaving the job, leaving United Cerebral Palsy, leaving San Diego. Today’s tell will be the most difficult, as I have been working with Jolene at the Ocean Beach People’s Co-op more than a year and have become a true partner in the work she does every Tuesday. I’m not looking forward to it.

Tomorrow it will be the two men and one woman I’m there for at the UCSD Hillcrest Hospital. There’s only about three months of history there, but having worked in the field of “human services” going on 40 years, I know that a kind, devoted worker saying they are leaving gets experienced in a myriad of ways, and sometimes painfully.

Leaving is leaving. I will be kind and caring and patient with my upcoming goodbyes, and keep on keeping on until I go – the 15th in OB my last day. North toward Oakland five days later.