Answering For It — REVISED

Near my job is a building I pass every day. A low-slung affair in the middle of an over-large parking lot, it resembles a bank or a real estate office. The grounds are aggressively landscaped, deliberately shaded with ornamental trees, marked out by mulched quilts of annual flowers and bright shrubs. There are always cars in the parking lot, even on the weekends. The building is a nursing home.

Most mornings when I pass, the front lobby isn’t fully lit, and there are few signs of activity behind its glass walls. But along the exterior walls there are many windows, and the windows are almost all fully lit, even in the early hours. Experience never allows us to forget, and I have experience with the rooms behind those cheery-looking windows. Every morning, I remember.

What comes to me fully when I remember my years working in nursing homes is not the abuse and the neglect — and these things are a reality, don’t kid yourself — is the deep and abiding sense of loss that hangs over the residents. Even the cheery, chipper ones used to tell me that what really saddened them was not being in the nursing home per se, but the constant awareness of what they could no longer do and no longer have.

Think of yourself right now and imagine that someone stronger and more capable than you came to you and announced that you would no longer be able to shower when you wanted to or shower alone. That you would no longer be able to read your favorite blogs when you felt like it. That your days of prowling through your pantry and fridge and grazing on leftovers and cheese crackers and grapes were done. This is the reality of nursing home life: the removal or severe curtailment of the small things.

The little fellow nodding off in his wheelchair in front of the blaring tv? He used to enjoy making bird houses and maintaining a small flower garden for his wife, and now he can no longer speak or hold a fork. The somewhat scary crone on the love seat with the big stack of crossword puzzles she never solves, the one who screeches if the staff asks her to come to the dining room? She once taught Sunday School and Vacation Bible School and visited all the sick and shut-ins in her church with hand-crocheted coasters and homemade brownies. And the people from church have stopped coming, and the grandchildren are somewhat frightened of her and very frightened of this noisy, smelly place where she now lives. The heavyset, slovenly man who sits and stares out the window and refuses to talk or acknowledge attempts at conversation? He used to walk his dog every evening and stop for a ten-minute chat with his neighbor across the street. And now his house is occupied by a low-income family, his dog has been euthanized because his son didn’t want to take on the responsibility, and his only walking is to his room and to the dining room.

How many of the residents behind the windows I see every morning would give all their worldly goods just to be able to make a pan of biscuits and a skillet full of gravy for their family, just one more time? Or to scratch their old Siamese cat, now long dead, behind her ears just one more time? Or to slide into the driver’s seat of the well-maintained Buick and go for a drive down to the old home place, just one more time? They all want these things. They all want the things they have lost. And how easily they lost them. How easily the younger, stronger people stripped them of these things. There is no mystery in the confused stares of the nursing home residents. Their stares are a demand. Why? Why was this done to me? Who will answer for it?

But no one speaks up. And so they withdraw into the soft, quiet center of their own souls, where even the worst memories are preferable to the jangling chaos of noise and strangers on the outside of their once-vital frames.

I am ashamed when I think back to how many times I was forced to give short shrift to needy residents because we were understaffed and overworked. And in the mornings, on my drive to work, I look at the windows of the nursing home and I know that good people are being neglected, and that a few good people are forced to do the neglecting, and I despise the age in which I live.

Ah, the power of memories to embarrass me. I think back to friends I have neglected or betrayed. Friendships left untended and let go. Opportunities squandered. Chances missed. Harsh words spoken in flashes of fury that can never be taken back. Busy-ness that crowded out true service. Or unthinking attacks against the innocent.

Some years ago, squirrels were raiding my bird feeders to the point where the birds were getting almost no sunflower seeds and the squirrels were growing fat from them. I tried many strategies, but even the best feeders required some patrolling on my part. One day, I opened the front door and yelled at a scrawny squirrel who had a good purchase on one of the feeders and was feasting. He paid me no mind. I fetched my BB rifle and fired off a shot in his general direction. He ran to the nearest tulip poplar and scurried halfway up the trunk, then turned and chattered at me, scolding me for my rudeness. He had a white face and looked as venerable as a wizard. For some reason I still cannot understand, I fired off another shot at him, just a random shot of warning, but this time the BB struck him. The old squirrel jumped and landed on the grass and stared at me. Then he hopped in fluid arcs across the grass and cleared the fence and was gone.

Not long after this, my nearest neighbor and I were chatting, and he mentioned to me the elderly squirrel that lived in our area. “Old Methuselah,” he called him. “Lean old thing. White face. Been around here for years.” I nodded and pretended to listen to the rest of his words, but I was thinking of the way the old squirrel had looked at me. Why? Why was this done to me? 

In my undisturbed moments, I wonder if I will ever have the chance to set some things right. I wonder if a shriveled old gray squirrel would listen to an apology if I could express it in a way he could understand. I long for the chance. Every time I see a squirrel near my home, I look closely to see if its Methuselah. But I haven’t seen him in years. He never returned to my precious bird feeders and their irreplaceable sunflower seeds. He let me take away the thing he enjoyed under the sheltering trees outside my house. And all he did in return was to look at me.

My mind wanders, and my attempts to express certain things are clumsy and disjointed, like this piece of writing. But the disquiet within me is clear and focused. I am disquieted because I have too often been a party to removing the small joys from other people and from God’s creatures. Can these things ever be set right? And what things, so dear to me today, will be taken from me? Someday I will be girded and carried where I desire not to be. Will this set right the things that disturb my mind these days?

REVISION:

After posting and then re-reading this post, I realized that it lacks something. After reflecting on what I was attempting to communicate, I realized that I did leave something out, something that might provide a bit of perspective.

A point I was trying to make was this: so many of the things that the aged are denied in nursing homes (and sometimes in their family homes) are not unreasonable things. They are in fact no big deal and would cost very little in terms of time or trouble to allow. If an elderly man would like to take a walk outside…really, now…why can’t someone take him outside and monitor his safety? Are we to believe that nursing homes trust staff members with dispensing potentially fatal medications around the clock but are too short-staffed or too unskilled to walk with (or behind) a geriatric gentleman who simply wants to feel the breeze on his face and the pavement beneath his feet while thinking his own thoughts and not participating in some group activity dreamed up by a 25 year-old activities director? This is just one example of the hundreds I could offer.

And finally, this applies to the elderly squirrel and me. Really, now, what was the harm in the old fellow eating sunflower seeds at my bird feeder? Why did I react as if he were some vicious interloper, running amok on my homestead? My reaction shamed me afterwards, and old Methuselah’s reaction saddens and embarrasses me even at this moment as I revisit it in my mind.

So much that I see as important in a given moment is anything but. And I miss or pass by or evade so much that is vital. Will I ever learn wisdom?

~ S.K. Orr