Years ago, I volunteered two mornings a week at a "day activity program" for people whom others had labeled as severely retarded. I communicated with them by typing, and provided them with the only opportunity some of them had from one week to the next to engage in a real conversation with anyone.
After six months of volunteering, I was abruptly told by the agency's director that I was no longer welcome there, since the people I was engaged with were "becoming too agitated" by my visits. (It's true, in a way - our conversations were sometimes about things they cared about deeply, and staff became upset when they saw them crying while they talked to me.) After pleading with the director, I was allowed a supervised 5-minute visit with each of the folks I had been meeting with to tell them that they had done nothing to drive me away, and that I would do whatever I could to be able to return some day. I've never seen any of them again.
I was heartbroken - lonely for my friends, guilty that the dismissal was somehow my fault, devastated that each of them would feel abandoned one more time. I met a few days later with David, another man with autism with whom I was close friends, and he comforted me... he typed this:
dont worry mayer. they will understand why you left. they are used to things like that. remember that you have given them a big gift. you have seen them for who they really are and nobody can ever take that away from them.
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