When I worked in a nursing home, I often lamented at the standard of care for a certain percentage of the population there. It was a state(ish) funded program and if the Oldster-in-Question didn't have direct and consistent family involvement, he or she often got shuffled to the bottom of the list, so to speak. Last one out of bed and dressed, last one to have their needs tended to, in other words. For example, if the staff knew that Edwin's wife came in every day by 9:00am, he was the first one out of bed and made presentable. I'm not bashing the staff. It's hard work and they are grossly under-qualified and underpaid, in my opinion.
One day, a psychiatrist I worked with overheard me talking about my feelings. He was from Russia (or, perhaps, the USSR) and heartily disagreed with me. 'Thees place,' he said, 'ees not bad for the old people. They are eating, they are having a place to sleep, they are having clothes and shelter. Eet is not a bad place to be when being old.' He said that in his home country, he had seen much, much worse, regarding the treatment of the very old and poor. This, by comparison, he reasoned, was a place that was safe and warm--food and shelter provided for free. He implied that anything else was a luxury.
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Not long after I'd taken the position there, I'd come to know a group of residents who were on my case load. Many of them had tokens and mementos displayed in their rooms. Cards from adult children, crayon drawings from great-(or even great-great) grandchildren. There were residents who had regular visits from loved ones. And then, there were those who seemingly had no one.
One such man, I'll call him John, struck me as particularly lonely. He was a widower for many years. He'd had children and grandchildren. No one came to visit him. There were no cards or flowers or drawings. He was physically compromised but mentally alert most of the time. He spoke to me of his family, about his distress over their absence. I was filled with concern for him and not a small amount of anger at his family for their abandonment. Working in an environment that forever smells of piss, in varying levels of *freshness* can increase your general irritability, you know.
One day, I was discussing John with a member of the nursing staff there and vented a little of my vicarious indignation at his children for not visiting.
It went like this:
The Nurse: 'Oh,' said the half-smiling nurse, to the starry-eyed-see-the-best-in-everyone optimist, 'You might not want to feel TOO bad for him.'
Me: 'Why's that?' I asked.
Nurse: 'Well, for starters, he was a raging, abusive drunk who used to beat his wife and kids when they were small.'
Me: '...'
Nurse: 'And so, they don't visit him.'
Looking back, it's hard to imagine that I was so shocked by that information. Of course he'd had a long life before ending up there. Wasn't I mad at the kids he'd sired long before he'd been admitted? But, the thing is, I WAS shocked. Somehow, picturing this frail, broken guy as a raging, wife-and-kid-beating alcoholic, opened up another compartment in my brain. I imagined the wife and kids terrified of him, imagined his carelessness and his lack of awareness of the passage of valuable relationship-building time. And here he was, old and frail and lonely and complaining that his kids deserted him. He wasn't even contrite. The information had come from the chart on his intake. It seemed that he wasn't wishing they'd forgive him his transgressions, he was wishing that they'd forget them.
And although I still cared for him and the person he was now, a person who was in physical and emotional pain, I was no longer angry at his kids for not visiting. In fact, I wouldn't ever again begrudge a child his distance.
Especially if I didn't know the back-story.
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My daughter was born on my Grandfather's birthday. This would have tickled my mother to death (you know, if she was still alive.) Her father, my grandfather, always held a significant (read: large and intractable) part of her heart. Although he was never what you'd call *easy to get along with* (which is putting it v e r y mildly,) my mother felt tied to him. Obligated. (Get this: my Grandmother was the definition of easy to love, no kidding.)
My earliest recollections of my Grandfather were of the discomfort I felt in his presence. A bombastic figure, he was not easy to be around. He yelled a lot, not at me (with very few exceptions) but at my Grandmother. She would roll her eyes or make a face at him from the other room but the ongoing dynamic made me cringe even before I was consciously aware that it was fucackt. (Not wanting to give a total wrong impression, let me say this: he is also very charming and generous and smart and witty and is often the case with people of a similar profile, very sensitive. In other words, he IS lovable, there are just, you know, some hurtles.)
He had given up drinking when I was very small, before I was conscious of it, anyway, but I imagine that the dry version of him was only shades different. His views are set and they are as diametrically opposed from mine as is possible to get.
When my Grandmother started to forget things, it seemed an extension of the more self-effacing kind of humor that she employed in her life. By the time it was obvious that there was something wrong, she was pretty compromised. My Grandfather was determined to care for her for as long as he could.
My mother had purchased a book about living with someone with Alzheimer's, I found it on her bookshelf after she died. I am certain it was intended for her father and so, I gave it to him. He was tearful in his gratitude. He read it and talked to me about how helpful it was. He had come to depend on my mother and her ever-presence and he felt the loss of her like no one else. (His one son in another state and this other son, disowned (for good reason.))
When my Grandmother passed, I went home. He was happy to see us and this normally witty, joke-telling, bear of a man seemed, for the second time in a short span, greatly diminished. Mentally, he is still sharp as a whip. But emotionally, there was cracking evident. The strain of caring for my Gram had taken all of his time and without her, he felt at loose ends. Jangly. 'Too much time to think, Hon,' is the way he put it.
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When I told my grandfather that I was being induced on the 5th of June he asked me to wait. 'Wait until the 6th, why don't you?' We laughed and I told him that I had no interest in being in labor for over 24 hours. But two days later, in between pushes, I'd kept my eye on the clock as it crept toward Midnight. The Little Sister marveled at this afterward, thinking that I had been keeping track of time. 'No,' I laughed, 'I was looking to see how close we were getting to Grampa's birthday.'
I called him to tell him that we were all coming home this Thanksgiving and he told me this: 'You've just made me the happiest man alive. My heart is singing.'
Sometimes I think that if my mom knew how infrequently I talk to my Grandfather now, that she might be disapproving. I know that she would certainly take to the older, softened version of him. It was in her nature to find the best in everyone. Sometimes I can't help but to think how different his life (and mine) would be if my mother was still alive. If I think too long on it, it can create a little pang of guilt.
But I try my best not to begrudge myself some distance, knowing the back-story as I do.
