“What day is it?”
“Saturday.”
“Have I asked you what day it is?”
“No, its Saturday.”
“Ok”, looking at watch. "What are we doing for dinner tonight?"
Ninety-two year old woman, a widow, her husband dead 14 years, lives alone in her apartment in a building for seniors. Alone, except for the hired girls that take twelve hour shifts with her, eight in the morning to eight at night. Then a different girl comes and stays until the next morning at 8am. Over and over again, seven days a week. The hired helpers are there to get her meals, help her dress and undress, make sure her gait belt is in place so they have something sturdy to hang on to as the woman loses her balance and tips backwards. The girls get paid to answer her questions, “what day is it? what are we doing for dinner? what day is it? are we going downstairs for dinner? what day is it?”. They are paid to do her laundry and take her toothbrush from her hand, gently and quietly placing a comb in her hand so she may continue combing her hair with that, instead of the toothbrush.
At meals in the tiny apartment, the woman makes eye contact and offers a muted smile, the unrecognition naked in her eyes as she asks me, like she has every Saturday for the past two months, “are you a student here?” She can be sweet and kind, offering phrases about how she’s glad I’m here to keep track of things and how she needs me to find her way back to her apartment. Sometimes she seems upset as she testily asks if I am sure there’s no dinner in the dining room tonight or what that noise is as the dryer spins her clean clothes round and round. I get paid to focus and breathe and maintain my peace and allow Love to flow through me while I care for this woman who lives her life as a human being in a different way than she used to live her life. She was a writer and a social organizer. A celebrated and award winning volunteer for the very senior community she now lives in with her twenty-four-seven caregivers.
It works out as a beautiful story for me and my family. The wages I am paid to care for her allow us to have a safe, reliable vehicle to drive around. Because she can’t remember what day it is and occasionally tips over on her feet, I was able to secure a loan to pay for my car.
Who am I to say what is sad or wrong in the world?
