I currently work part time at a nursing home on Long Island. It is sincerely the best job I have ever had (aside from being a writer). I have volunteered at nursing homes before, the most memorable of which was when I spent time at Coler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital on Roosevelt Island, NY. I spent my time in the dementia and bed-ridden wings of the chronic care facility and realized how such a simple gesture of sitting down and speaking with this someone, visiting them, sharing in their company, can brighten their day and bring a smile to their face. If you have a family member in a nursing, rehabilitation, or long-term care hospital, PLEASE go visit them, go spend time with them and make them feel loved.
Some of my friends have expressed an inability to work with the elderly. They tell me they couldn't handle it emotionally and it's too sad for them. Similarly, I have read articles lamenting nursing homes, saying their happy exteriors are just a farce. It's a societal problem; we shouldn't shun the elderly, we should incorporate them into our lives, no matter the state of their decline. A nursing home is only as positive as people make it, that includes the visitors and staff.
The one thing that the elderly have taught me is to appreciate the present.
No matter their mental or physical state, people can still react to things moment to moment. Though they may not remember you in a few minutes, they appreciate what you're doing for them at that moment. Though they may be trapped in a delusion, a smile no less fills them with joy and a happy gesture can capture their misplaced fascination, if only fleetingly. It is the simple things that count. Pay attention to their mannerisms, listen to what they have to say (no matter how nonsensical), for not even age can snatch away the grandeur of compassion. Give them your respect and your love, and they will sense it. Respect them for who they are and were, and realize that it is the tiny moments of now that matter to them most.
Aroysgevorfen
(Yiddish: "wasted")
A senile man said
to his mirror,
“I’m not Dorian
Gray,”
And as he shook his
bony finger,
He said, “You too
will fade away!”
Stubbornly he stared
it down,
His face contained
within,
Pacing, naked,
stern, his scowl
Refused to let this
reflection win.
“You’re not the man
I was,
You’re the child I
am now!”
He scrutinized the
scaly hubs
In which his tired
pupils bowed.
He traced the lines
that donned this shell,
Like a fractured
Faberge egg,
Into the cockles of Time’s
vast dell
And succumbed to its
vicious phage.
The impudent
structures of this cask,
Feeble, adulterated,
and gross,
Possessed no tokens
of their past,
Which was forthright
tarnished when juxtaposed.
The cicatrices,
faded, absorbed;
The supremacy
mislaid within;
Hair, sallow; allure,
usurped;
Disturbed, he
returned to the eyes again.
They seemed foggy
with cataracts,
Their fiery glint
snuffed out.
His skin resembled
melting wax;
His knees, consumed
by gout.
And starring at this
ransacked body,
The crusade of life had
pillaged it bare,
He could not
recognize the shoddy
Chrysalis that met
him there.
Where was all the
jubilance?
Where had that
effervescence gone?
Played out like a
game of Risk
Or some
old-fashioned song.
“You’re not the man
I was,”
He whispered once again,
“You’re the child I’ve
become.”
But whatever
happened to the man?
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