Colleagues in Love

May 26 2025

I wrote about this in my column, Business Different, in the Santa Fe New Mexican May 26, 2025.
Santa Fe New Mexican Column

The Work

Every morning, I wake up and listen for Martha’s breath. Usually, I can hear her snoring softly, like a little cartoon mouse — more of an inhale and “mimimimi” exhale than a buzzsaw “zzzzz.”

When I don’t hear her snoring, I look into her room — her door is 3 feet from mine — and usually see her lying on her stomach with her cat, Muffy, snuggled tight into her waist.

One recent Sunday morning, there was no “mimimimi,” and Muffy was curled into a ball a foot away from Martha. I knelt on the floor next to her bed, stroked her face, held her cold hand and wept.

The third call I made was to Dalia Lopez, Martha’s caregiver for more than two years.

Dalia and I had a long moment of silence while we absorbed that Martha was gone. She said she couldn’t come because she had family in town from out of the country. Twenty minutes later, she was there.

She kissed Martha’s face and wept, holding her cold body and telling her how much she loved her. Then we held each other, tears streaming down our faces. When I tried to tell her thank you, she stopped me and said, “Don’t thank me.”

I stopped thanking Dalia. I knew it was right to stop, but I didn’t understand why.

Martha and Dalia spent close to 40 hours a week together for more than two years. They built an authentic relationship. That’s our work — building authentic relationships. With loving kindness at our core, everyone in my house became part of the support team that formed around Martha.

An amazing community coalesced — paid caregivers, weekly therapist visits, my children and their father, doctors and hospice supports. We were united by our care for Martha.

Dalia was my colleague in this sacred work. An artisan of authentic love and connection.

I love Dalia, and I have eternal gratitude for her. But I understand now why she stopped my thanks.

We weren’t in a transaction.
We were colleagues in love.

The best care isn’t a service delivered.
It’s a relationship lived.

What the Work Taught Me

Gratitude assumes a direction.

Someone gives.
Someone receives.

But some kinds of work don’t move that way.

Dalia wasn’t helping me.
She wasn’t doing something for me.
She was doing the same work I was doing — from a different place in the circle.

We were both accountable to Martha.
We were both changed by loving her.
We were both shaped by staying.

Once I saw that, “thank you” felt like a narrowing.
Like turning something shared into something owned.

Love, when it emerges from shared responsibility, doesn’t want repayment.
It wants recognition.
And sometimes, it just wants you to stay quiet and not turn it into a story about yourself.

Reflection

Have you ever felt strange being thanked for something that didn’t feel like a favor? What happened?

You’re not alone.

Some work doesn’t want applause.
It doesn’t want praise.
It doesn’t even want gratitude.

It wants company.

It wants someone else willing to stand in the same weather, carry the same weight, and not rush to name who owes whom when it’s over.

If you’ve been there — at a bedside, on a line, in a classroom, in a kitchen, in a moment where the work asked more of you than words could cover — you already understand this.

You don’t need to explain it.

You can sit here for a while.