In the middle of a Wednesday, on what had always been a "work day" in my life, I found myself at home, standing at our kitchen window.
I stared out at the September noon dazed. I was not in some business meeting of the kind I've attended for forty years. Instead, I was just standing there – no phones ringing, no secretary to remind me I needed to get ready for some luncheon speech to the nursing staff.
This is what semi-retirement looks like, I thought to myself.
The sounds of workmen sawing and pounding drifted across the street from a neighbor's house. So did the song of the workmen laughing and whistling their way through the day.
I remembered another sound – the voices of two other folks laughing. It was in a hallway at Riverside Methodist Hospital one day during the time I was President and CEO there. On that day, also around noon, two members of the housekeeping staff glanced up at me trudging across the linoleum to a meeting and started laughing.
"What's up?" I asked the two women in an awkward attempt at solidarity.
"Can we tell you the truth?" one asked.
"Sure," I said, "unless you want to tell me what I look like."
The two laughed even harder then looked sheepish. "Out with it," I chuckled.
"We were laughing at you. You looked so serious coming down the hallway. We'd hate your job. We like to laugh our way through the day. I'll bet you can't do that,"
"You're right," I told them. "Maybe I need to laugh a lot more."
Then one of them gave me the best kind of compliment. She said she was glad I was "the boss" because she and her friend knew they could laugh and sing while doing their work and not get in tourble.
Housekeeping is tough in general. In a hospital, it can be a nightmare (as I discovered back when I accompanied housekeepers on their rounds of cleaning blood from floors.)
As I walked on, I heard one of the women start singing. The other joined in. A patient, hauling his IV pole, smiled as he walked by them. "Keep it up," he said. These two women understood how to live Love in jobs that pay way too little and ask way too much.
My job etched worry across my face. Their calling painted smiles on their faces. They had learned how to laugh and sing instead of whine and complain.
As I've often written, it's the first-line staff that determines the success or failure of patient care. It's the nurses, housekeepers, therapists and technicians that most affect the quality of a patient's stay.
The only important thing leaders do is to take care of the people who take care of people - to love, honor and respect them. One of the best ways to do that is to help them look a grim job in the face…and smile back.
I don't remember anything about the meeting I was walking to on that day about twenty years ago. Instead, it is the laughter and singing of those women that echoes through my heart.
-Rev. Erie Chapman, J.D.
Journal of Sacred Work 
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