Not much is invested in training us because most of us don’t stay with the job for longer than a few months. Our residents, however, are often here for years, their families paying from $45,000 and $60,000 annually, depending on the level of care needed. If Jasmine and I work eight hours a day, five days a week for 52 weeks, we still wouldn’t clear $15,000 each after deductions. But of course, we don’t put in that time. I am gone in four months, and Jasmine, considered a veteran by then, is gone in five.

Those are the facts, but they are misleading, for as tough and often unpleasant as this job was, as little as it paid, it was also, to my enormous surprise, the best job I’ve ever had. It taught me patience. It taught me how to live in the moment. It taught me how to communicate with people who no longer have words. It taught me that we are more than the sum of our remembered past, that when it seems as if everything is gone, something still remains.

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

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