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Health & Fitness

Journey To The Fourth Dimension

One thing I have grown up knowing is that I would never be able to work in the social services or with families in constant distress because I find that I have a tendency to feel too much. One of my oldest memories was a day when I was riding with my family to church and it was so hot outside that the air condition in my parent's 16 seater church bus just didn't seem to work. As I peeled myself off of the seat, I looked outside and saw a man with no shirt laying on the sidewalk. I screamed to my parents that they should help him. I remember my parents saying that they were going to call 9-1-1 and I cried for several minutes because I could almost feel the pavement scorching itself into my skin and the oneness my body would have felt if it was melting into the black pavement. 

I thought I got away from the deep empathy of my childhood however it always comes to haunt me. Sometimes the waiting room at Brook Farm Veterinary Center can be an interesting place. So many different types of people come in and inadvertently I tend to become a pad of paper and clients write their stories all over my mind. I catch memories and clients leave them with me many times willingly. At times, some of the stories relayed to me are funny and at other times my heart aches and a tear wells up in my eye.

One particular case which will not leave me anytime soon was a man whose pet was recently diagnosed with cancer. As he was going through the process he consulted several different veterinarians, close friends who went through the same situation and combed the brain of our Doctor for expert advice. Eventually his love spurred him to drive all the way down to Long Island in order to get care for his pet. The next day I called him to see how he and his pet were doing and he told me that he had a dream. His mother had passed away from cancer over a decade ago and she came to him and told him to really be careful giving his dog (I'll call him Cody), treatment because the pain that Cody would go through was much to bear. She told him in the dream that she knew that pain and wanted him to really think about it before treating Cody. 

This revelation touched me and I could feel the pain and was just in wonder at how much influence a mother can have even after passing away. 

Have you ever had an experience like this? I haven't, and do not hope to have one soon. However, I can tell you, I could almost feel how he felt. 

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