The Patron Saint of Goodness

For the past five years I have worked at a high-end residential interior design firm. The cost clients pay for everything from custom sofas and drapes to lighting to cabinet hardware are staggering to say the least. Over the years I have seen some incredible things and as someone who loves fabrics I got my fix regularly. When I fell madly in love with a fabric that a client had ordered I asked the designer how much it was per yard. “More than you can afford,” she told me and we both laughed because that was 100% accurate regardless of what was delivered to the office. I loved the environment and seeing the creative process at work, and after what could be a two or more year process, touring the finished house to see the final results. For the admin side of the office who mainly saw photos on a computer screen of what was ordered, we’d walk around in awe at how it all came together and I loved being part of a team that created such beautiful environments.

But in the last year things started shifting for me, slowly but naggingly shifting. Around me were stories of people getting swept off the street, desperate parents who couldn’t afford healthcare for their sick kids, or the hopeless at stoplights with cardboard signs asking for help. All the while I’d sit at my desk and process invoices for wallpaper for a single room that was more than many people make in a year and be sick to my stomach. “If I had this kind of money,” I’d often say to my coworker, “I’d figure out a way to put it to better use than all of this,” and maybe those clients did do those kinds of things. I don’t know but the wealth, the excess, the demands for more and then more and then more started to feel obscene to me. Coupled with that was an ongoing personnel situation for me that never got resolved and for the last few months when I drove to work I’d ask myself the same thing. What are you doing?

One morning when I was feeling like I was getting sick (physically and mentally) I lost it with my immediate boss and laid out how unreasonable some things had gotten which was ugly and went about how those things usually go. I was so aggravated by so much I wanted to walk out the door and never look back. But since I’m a responsible adult I kept working and that afternoon as I was at my desk overhearing a design consultation for clients who were renovating four different homes at the same time, my sister texted me that Dolly Parton had died. I stared at my phone like that couldn’t possibly be true and got on a news site to confirm.

Within minutes the accolades started pouring in on social media and most of them brought tears to my eyes. The path this woman took was an example that with wealth comes responsibility, and while I’m sure she had many homes, she also made massive donations in so many ways to make the world better. Two days later I found out I had bronchitis and stayed home with a cough suppressant and inhaler and plenty of time to think about everything. When I went back to work I got there early like I normally did and said to the owner, “I can’t do this anymore.”

It’s now been a month since my last day and for the record I’d like to state that I very much liked the job and my coworkers. Half of them were much younger than me and I loved being the oldest woman in the office and propping them up or giving them advice. It was a good place for me over many seasons and I’m grateful for my time there, but unlike them, I have more years behind me than ahead of me.

Since I left I don’t think of myself as retired but in a transitional place of figuring out what costs and what matters. In the meantime, I’m directing my prayers to our beloved Saint Dolly who could look at a map and point to the fork in the road where goodness is the path less traveled and all the money in the world can’t buy time.