When I help a disabled teenager bathe, it is not easy. There is a certain anxiety, a kind of fear in the face of nudity. Without her having chosen it, I enter her most intimate space. I am forced to see and touch parts of her body she would normally keep hidden.
Each time, I must remind myself: she has no choice but to stand naked before me, to reveal her body—marked by handicap, without pretense or shield.
I think of you, Maria. At your age, you would prefer to shower alone. You suffer through these moments, perhaps as a way of refusing your handicap. And yet you care about how you look. Sometimes you are glad that a friend is helping you instead of your parents. For this to go well, I try to anticipate your needs, to listen to your habits, to take all the time it requires. When I do this, the technical aspects fade away. What remains is friendship.
With you, Elsa, completely dependent on help, I do not know how you experience these moments. But I treasure them—they are full of tenderness. In my hands, I try to place love, as if God himself were entrusted to me. *Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.* These words give deep meaning to these moments, even when they are hard.
Myriam, volunteer caregiver, 2009
(Ombres et Lumière no. 169)