One Womans Internal Battle

Imagine a frightened little girl who is locked inside of a closet as a child, being punished for whatever it was that she may or may not have done wrong. Shes screaming, stuck inside this closet for days on end with light switches that dont produce light, no food, no water, no where to relieve herself if need be. She grows into an adult and finally moves away from the horrid people she called Mommy and Daddy. She goes through life with extreme psychological issues...in and out of mental institutions and hospitals along the way.

By the time she becomes an elderly woman, she is diagnosed with Alzheimers Disease. She is placed in a care facility with a more then nice room and all the amenities that she would need...her very own bathroom, cozy bed, window that overlooks the grand mountains of the northeast. She sits and stares...she is lonely, exhausted and her mind is a never ending abyss of bad memories. She rings her call bell because its too dark in the middle of the day...her light switches arent working, she claims. She makes a mess of her bathroom because she believes her toilet lid is chained shut. The door to her room is constantly "locked", though we show her it is clearly a door that opens and closes as she pleases.

I go to check on her the other day and feel as though I have walked into a nightmare, a scene from a horror movie. I enter her room to find a sick little old woman digging a hole to china in her walls with only her fingernails...She is crying and mumbling under her breath. She is scratching away the paint and plaster as though she was trying to escape from something. I approach her slowly, not knowing how close to get...I do not want to startle her as she could become combative. I whisper her name and she turns to look at me with bloodshot eyes and bleeding hands.

I look deep into those eyes as she is huffing and puffing away, staring blankly into my face with shame, confusion...And then she is crying in my shoulder, Im holding her telling her it will be ok...Im not sure if she hears me, or at least understands but it was a moment where time had stopped and it was just her and I. A young woman trying to comfort an elderly woman. Its funny how the tables can sometimes turn...

10mgs of Haldol later...she is resting comfortably and quietly in the nurses member services station. She has her hands on a paper towel, I have washed the blood from them and trimmed down what was left of her nails and painted them a neutral orangish brown color. She cant thank me enough. And by the time it is time for my shift to come to an end, her blue eyes fill up with tears again and she asks me why I have to go. Assuring that I will be back tomorrow, I kiss her cool chick and walk out of the office. I dont think I could handle looking back at her...One more person who walked out on her. But I will return, always do...

As hard as this job is, I will always come back for more. Because it is a lesson in itself and one that I love despite the heartache it may bring. It teaches, it taunts and it haunts. But its devastatingly beautiful as I like to call it...And theirs one thing I know for sure...No matter what kind of background that any of my residents will ever had had, no matter what they have been through, I will try my damnedest to make sure they are NEVER left in the dark, never left hungry, never left lonely or go without the things they need to be happy. I will see to it that they live out their last years the happiest that they could be with everything I can give them.

And THAT is COMPASSION.

For Her

"Some people come into our lives and quickly go.
Some people move our souls to dance. They awaken us to
new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom.
Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon.
They stay in our lives for awhile, leave footprints
on our hearts, and we are never ever the same."
~ Flavia Weedn

They say you cannot personalize a career position where your heart is in jeopardy of becoming close to someone you may lose...Considering I work with the elderly, this chance is a high one. Ive always tried to maintain my distance, though there are a few people who have become huge influences on the way I live my life.

Tomorrow one of my favorite residents that I have ever cared for will be leaving us to go live in a county care facility because of financial reasons. The care home she is going to is much more a prison, especially to a nearly 100 year old woman who was a survivor of the Holocaust. She was ordered when she was young, to place a pair of too small shoes on her feet and to march for miles upon miles upon miles with blistered, bruised toes and heels...

She lived the rest of her life struggling to walk and as she grew into an elderly woman, her mobility became harder..her body a little more decrepit, her skin a little thinner..But this womans amazing spirit never decreased though she became frail and later, suffered a stroke, disabling her from even writing a letter. Her eyes and smile still glitter like a thousand stars in the sky. Her wisdom never ever has seized to amaze me. And while some may not actually hear her when she talks, I not only hear her, I breathe her, I truly see her and feel for this woman who has been through so much.

She will now leave her cozy room, with the burnt orange sheets, feather down pillows and the smell of lavender and vanilla swirling through the air...She will leave the space where her clothes that she made herself are hanging gently, color coded, in her closet. Her yellow towels with her initials embroidered in gold will most likely get packed away and become lost amongst other of her belongs. Her white lacy curtains that blow in the window that can only be cracked 1 inch will be rolled up...Her makeup and threads, needles and fabric will eventually become pieces of her past. I can only hope that the pictures of her as a young girl, falling in love, through marriage and birth of a future business owner and a doctor, will follow her to the county home.

She communicates the worry of having roommates...her husband had been enough for her ;) And for only have one bathroom to share amongst the other people she will reside with..."What if I have to use the potty while they are in there?" She brought me to tears when she told me that it wont be long before we read her name in the obituaries...her picture placed with the others who have gone on to God...and she is afraid. She isn't ready to die..."But no one will take care of me the way that you girls have..They don't know me over there like you do here and I'm not sure I can start over again..a new place, new people..." she shakes her head with tears in her eyes as I sit for the last half hour of my shift with her, getting ready to say goodbye.

I hold her hand and tell her that if I could, I would bring her home with me and care for her until she is ready to go to God. She smiles and pats my hand..."Ill never forget you...Whatever man you take for a husband will be a lucky one! Youre beautiful and caring...Im not sure if Ive ever met someone quite like you..unique, thats what you are." And thats when I lost it...tears began flowing freely down my face and she tells me not to cry and that Ill have other residents like her...But Im not so sure. Ive had so many people who have touched my life in thier own special ways and she is no exception.

Ill visit her in her new home, though her depature will have been like a shot to the chest. As her family carried out her belongings and declined any help from us, I felt like I was losing a piece of my heart almost. Im really going to miss seeing this woman everyday. But she knows. And Ive reached out to her to let her know I love her, that it was a pleasure caring for her and that Ill be seeing her soon.

I hugged her, kissed her cheek and let go of her hand and turned from her. Began to hurry from her room but stopped in her doorway. Looked at her smiling back at me and I blew her a kiss. She lifted her limp arm up and pretended to have caught it. She laughed. And I laughed. "See ya later hun..." And she nodded like she does.

I walked away from her room and off to get in my car and drive home..which was a hard one and I would be lying if I said that I didnt cry the whole way. Thinking about her and hoping to God that she is treated well where she is going because there is not many pure, good souls like hers left in this world.

So I bid her farewell and goodluck in the next chapter in her life...for her book is surely filled by now, the binding coming apart from so much use. But shes the prime example of who I want to be at her age...one whos lived through it, been there, done this, that and the other thing. Shes left footprints on my heart~of a woman who has a great tale to tell in the latter years of life..not one big excuse.

Ill be seein you

XOXOX

For Them

As I look back on my experience as an Alzheimer's and Dementia caregiver...I remember all the people Ive learned from , laughed with, cried with. The people that make me remember why I do this job in the first place.

There will always be the angry one...I envision a man who takes his bible to the back of his caregivers head...The anxious one...Shes wandering with a constant look of fear on her face. The one who believes she is an employee..."I work my ass off for you people, give me a day off for Christ Sakes!"...Theres the one who is confined to her bed, her eyes never open, she does speak a word, yet she is on 3mls of Haldol 3x a day. Theres the man who can no longer tell the difference in his little pal, his cat...that he is throughly convinced and calls it "damn dog" day in and day out. The one that never fails to make you smile...Ill never forget pulling a pink felt pen from the depths of one womans depends.."Im saving it for later to draw a picture for my husband." I remember the one who no longer had an arm, it was severed in the line of fire when he was a soldier in the war.The one who cant understand a damn thing youre saying, but FEELS you and acts merely off of that.

The Titanic survivor who was placed in the 3rd boat out with her mother...and her father left behind to go down with the ship. An original player of the San Francisco 49ers..I suppose too many blows to the head left him a little confused..And then there was the man who had not a clue how to feed himself, get dressed or swallow his pills. He was young..diagnosed with Alzheimers at the fragile age of 26..He was never married, never had been blessed with children. There was one who was brilliantly gifted with music..Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaichovsky..and had an amazing smile..He was very modest, constantly ill man and a hospice patient for as long as I could remember. He wasnt ready to die. And Ill never forget the night he told me that he would not take his morphine, for he would let God take him as he willed without anypain medication to numb him.

The reason why I live where I do today, the reason why I live my life as I am now...chasing my dreams and riding a shooting star to the moon, why I believe that true love does exist and that Ill find it one day, I can thank a married couple for...They were married 70 years young and the husband opened doors, pulled his wifes chair out for her, held her hand, ordered her food, kissed her every chance he got...right up until the week before he passed away. I cared for them on 3rd shift and became lost in thier fairy tale right along with them. He used to tell me he knew from the moment he first met her that he was going to marry her one day. They had never been with anyone else and never wanted anything more then to live, love, laugh thier lives away together.

They never knew why I was there, caring for them every night with everything that I had, answering thier pendent calls on the first ring, assisting them with anything they needed from pain medications, to the one night he fell, trips to the bathroom, warm milk and a friend, or simply to sit in the dark holding the wifes hand and talking in the hours before her husband slipped from this world.While changing his linens of his hospice bed late one evening, he told me to get out and do things in my life while I still could. That theres a great big world out there waiting to be discovered. But that I would never know of all the wonderful things it had to offer if I didnt go out searching for them. He wondered why I was engaged to someone who he knew didnt treat me the best...he could see it in my eyes...He urged me to go somewhere, anywhere to see things in a different light...I just stared into his glassy blue eyes and smiled. People in your life will always tell you to live life to the fullest...But no one ever had said it to me that hit me quite like when he told me.It was a moment I will never forget.

The next day, he passed away in his sleep. It turned my world upside down, I cried for days. I visited his wife on my days off, I emotionally checked out from the other relationships in my life and couldnt think of anything except for the man who had told me to run...and just a week later, I booked a flight and moved across country to start my life over the "right way". I carry his words and his wifes with me everyday and though he is gone now, I believe he is watching over me and is guiding me in every step I take.

I thank him for that immensly. And I miss him. And pray for him and for his wife who has outlived him and I hear she is doing well. We all thought she would have died right along with him shortly after..but she tells my former coworkers,, "He wouldnt want me to..were still together..hes still my husband and I am still his wife. And I talk to him every night and every morning. I see him in my dreams and he is waiting for me on a white bench. Ill see him soon, but not now. Theres still more to see." And she still gossips with the other catty women...she still participates in activities, goes on outings, she visits her beautiful angelic looking daughters and grandchildren..Her life has not stopped merely because her soul mate has gone on to the other side. That, my friends, is true love.