This Is Us
Choosing to Trust — Or Not — Is a Lifelong Balancing Act
After my trust was abused in my marriage, I learned to trust myself
Suspicion is the companion of mean souls and the bane of all good society. —Thomas Paine
The porn videos sitting on his bedside table were the first thing I made note of. The one on top was “Poke-ahantas.”
It wasn’t unusual for a paid caregiver to answer the door at a hospice patient’s home and usher me, a hospice social worker, into the bedroom. Mr. K wasn’t in his bed, however.
I’d never met him before; he’d just begun receiving home hospice care the day prior. The nurse’s opening notes said he was born in the former Soviet Union and according to the paperwork, he was 50 years old with end-stage colon cancer. She reported his English was good. No mention of the porn.
“He is in the bathroom,” the caregiver noted as she turned to leave to go back to the kitchen, and she rolled her eyes as she did so, while simultaneously shouting toward a cracked door, that I assumed was the bathroom, “The social worker is here!”
She left me perusing the modest porn library. I stood awkwardly with my laptop computer in hand and…
