Inside Joseph's House

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A Resting Place, At Last

Two decades ago on Dec. 1, the first World AIDS Day drew attention to the global epidemic. Within two years, D.C. family doctor David Hilfiker, who had been working and living with the homeless, opened Joseph's House in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C., after noticing that an increasing number of them had been diagnosed with HIV.

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"It's funny because you see this guy who is so big and tells stories of prison, and I experienced a man who was full of love, who was playful. If his friends in prison could have seen this white boy from South Carolina leaning up against him, putting his head on his shoulder or wrestling with him. . . . I never would have guessed that two people from such different backgrounds could be close," says Brey Cribbs, a volunteer at a neighboring house who was holding Wylie when he died.

"We were sitting side by side, and I said to him, 'Rob, you are the tallest tree in the forest.' And he said, 'I feel that way,' " recalls Patricia Wudel. " I, too, took a lot of shelter in that tall tree."

Wudel first came to the house as a volunteer 17 years ago and has been the executive director for 11 years. Under her leadership, there is a visible effort to create an unguarded atmosphere among a staff that has every reason to put up shields. Volunteers are trained not just to change sheets, do laundry and cook meals, but to match their breathing to residents as they sit by their sides.

"I didn't want people to have to earn love. I wanted it to be given freely, unconditionally, no strings attached," Wudel said. "At Joseph's House, people are cared for in a way that we all very much hope that we'll be cared for as we die. I hope that I will not be abandoned emotionally or otherwise as I'm dying."

Here, it is okay for staff members to distinguish among the residents and admit that one death has affected them more than another. The cultural differences between the mostly white, middle-class staff and the mostly black, lower-class residents are also spoken about openly.

"I didn't want the folks who came here to die . . . to be standing in for somebody's father, or husband, or brother or lover," Wudel said. "I wanted them to be met for themselves. Not perfect, but beautiful. And not just beautiful, but complex, hurting, hurtful, whole."

Nurse Blossom Williams said she used to refer to many of the men who passed through the house as her husband, but she stopped that after Wylie died.

"Robert was my heart. After he passed, I decided I wasn't going to let anyone be my husband anymore. I will take care of them as if, but I won't call them my husband," she said, her words coated in a Jamaican accent. "You may not believe this: We take care of the clients, but they, in turn, take care of us."

Donald Harrell, 67, said when he first came to the house, he worried that it would be strange depending on young women to help change his adult diapers. He had served in the Navy for more than 15 years, visiting Spain, France and the Mediterranean. He later drove a bus for Metro, among other jobs.

Not to be able to care for himself is the worst part of the disease, he said.

"My son came home, and I was in my wife's house on the floor and I couldn't get myself off the floor. I didn't have the strength," he said. That was in February. After leaving the hospital, he lived with his youngest daughter but said it was a burden he didn't want for her. "I was urinating all over the couch, stuff like that. Who wants somebody in their house doing that?"

In March, Harrell came to Joseph's House. He has since started taking a computer class and carries a picture of a Porsche in his wallet that represents the first thing he ever printed from the Internet. He proudly shows it off while sitting in the same living room where the candles had burned for Wylie.

Like this, futures are planned where lives end.

"People are supposedly coming here to die. But I didn't come here to die, and I'm sure quite a few of them here think the same thing," Harrell said. "I got plenty of life in me."

Comments: vargast@washpost.com.