Who Am I ?

Years ago and I do mean years ago I served as a “psychological counselor” for a community health clinic in Nampa, Idaho. A of strange mess of reasons and forces moved in chorus to bring me front and center to be a member of this group. I wrote a book once, or the draft of a book, out lining some of the experiences I had with this operation. The manuscript to CMAT: Community Medical Assistance Team, was lost. I have considered rewriting the manuscript just to get the ideas out of my head but that too is fodder for another blog.

There was three who initially staffed the clinic on a daily bases. There were others in the background, forsure, but there were three of us, Dr. Mc Intyrre , Jose Rodiguise. I served about 18 months before burning out and returning to university. The clinics went on their way and I went on mine. That was more then 30 years ago. I have stayed in contact with Dr. McIntyre(Mac or Captain) but I lost contact with Jose. Mac always seemed to sort of know here Jose was and was able to communicate with him but I was never able to contact him and eventually lost contact. This changed , however, this last week. Jose had been in contact with Mac. Jose has found God, and thats cool, and has been on the road for a for a couple of months finding old friend. Mac informed me they had spoke and that the Mexican was actually in my area. Mac even had his cell phone number. A cell phone number! I could not believe it. Jose back in my life just like that.

I took the number and started making the calls. I of course was not able to get anything but a recording of his voice mostly in Spanish. It turns out he is a minister—again which does not really surprise me-- a minister in Mexico. He is traveling back and forth from Idaho and other states where he has children scattered. Then Thursday after noon as I was looking forward to a stress free three day weekend when I got a stressed out call from Dianne that Jose had just called her and was in Idaho bearing South and would be in town in a matter of hours. What are YOU going to do? You cannot bring him to the house—I even agree i cannot let Jose into the house. The house is chaos and the only people allowed in the house are the kids. Sorry but that is the way it is. I sure wish things were different round the house bu they are not.

I eventually made contact with Jose—he sounded the same and it great. There is another story in how we eventually linked. What we did to poor Jose was to force him to have dinner with us at the KFC on the corner from our neighborhood. I really wanted to take him somewhere nicer but Jose had to pee bad so we let him relieve himself but then purchased dinner and then we spoke for a couple of hours. Dianne said that Jose wanted us to ask him to spend the night but that was not going to happen. We eventually hugged and we sent him on his way to Moab.

In the course of the conversation I mentioned there were no images of the three of us together( Mac, Jose and me). We took no image of our group in the time we spent together. Jose agreed and said there were a couple he knew of himself and Mac and other Clinic staff but very few. I again, sort of knew this but never thought of the fact there IS PHOTOGRAPIC NO RECORD OF ME ! I suppose I could try to find some check stubs from the Federal programs which paid my stipend at that time. I guess I don't need too but more and more I wonder did I ever exist?