Other Voices
When I retired June 1, 1994, at 71, and walked out the doors of the Palo Alto VA Medical Center for the last time, after 20 years of service as a pharmacist, my life changed totally.
I knew a change was coming. To distract myself from it, I went back to my home country of Denmark for three months.
When I returned, I found myself living in a mobile home with 2 square yards of soil to cultivate and not much else to do outside reading, bicycling, hiking, dancing, etc.
I had many patients and friends at the hospital. I was kept busy all the time every day of the week, and people depended on my help and advice. Now I was somewhat isolated, I am also single, and I felt like a nobody, and that I was not needed. It was a most unhappy feeling. I learned that time can kill.
In my mobile home park, a volunteer at El Camino Hospital suggested that I become one also, and I did in early 1997.
And here is what I can tell you about it, two years and 1,000 hours later: It recreates the feeling again about being needed and useful. At the same time it facilitates the pleasure of paying something back to society for whatever was received over all those years from it.
I found true friends so late in my life, having a lot of fun among colleagues, laughing a lot, getting to know employees at the hospital, meeting a lot of interesting people, etc.
Time flies and one is again occupied and useful.
We have approximately 400 volunteers, often working in three to four hour daily shifts, paying a yearly fee for our memberships as well as for our handsome uniforms that must be impeccably clean and neat. Why? Because we get much back from it, that one can only explain as: Try it, and you will see and agree.
One day at the information desk a visitor said, "Why do you want to work for this hospital? They charged me lately thousands of dollars for my surgery."
My answer was easy. I said, "I do not work for this hospital, I work for Mogens!"
It is that simple.
Lauesen is a Mountain View resident.