Baby, it's cold outside....
correction... it's FREEZING!!! This week has been crazy. It has gone by so quickly. I had clinicals at another nameless, faceless, nursing home this week. It went pretty well. So friends and I went to the Barking Frog for lunch... all I can say is IT'S DELICIOUS. After lunch I helped feed the residents who could not feed themselves. I had one get mad at me when I wouldn't allow him to drink another residents milk. He has dysphagia and needed thickner so I couldn't just let him drink it. I am sure that if could have spoken he would have cussed me out.
After helping him to his room, changing, and putting him down for a nap I looked to help pass out trays to the residents who choose to eat in their rooms. As luck would have it on my second tray to be delivered I came into the room and this lady was sitting on the edge of her bed. I called her by name and asked her if she was ready for lunch. She replied yes, could I turn the lights on? The lights were on, overhead, end table lamp and the shade were up allowing the afternoon sun to shine brightly in onto the empty bed on the other side of the small room. "I can't see" She says again. My heart just sank. I am seeing myself in sixty years, I think to myself. I tell her that the lights are on and that I will stay with her and help her with lunch. She thanks me several times telling me that she just can't see to get around. I sit beside her on the bed and get her tray ready. I take her silverware and put them in her right hand. I then take that hand and "show" her where all the items are on her tray. meat, above that bread, to to the left carrots, and above them is a piece of chocolate cake. She readies her spoon and I put the napkin in her lap, (telling her first so she doesn't think I am molesting or robbing her.) To pass the amount of time between bites (it takes longer to eat as you get older) I make small talk with her. I love doing this with the older residents. Most of them have had so many different experiences and lives and it's wonderful to hear about them. She is nintey seven. She was born in Oklahoma but her Daddy was a farmer who always wanted to do better so they moved a lot growing up. She told me they would just get a nice house and get settled and he would move them. "He ended up with nothing" She said. She had two older brothers and before the "others" came her daddy used to play the fiddle and have her and her brothers dance. "Oh he taught us to dance!" She said, and her pale blue eyes lit up behind her thick glasses. The "others" turned out to me four more brothers and three more sisters. She said when the others started coming that daddy worked all the time and didn't play the fiddle anymore. During this time I am helping her with various foods and she eventually uses her finger to push the food onto the spoon after locating both food and spoon. She tells me about picking cotton, and how when the depression came the cotton wasn't worth anything and fields of the white fluff would go without being picked. She said that most people couldn't afford to pay someone to help pick it, because it was almost worthless. They turned the cows in on it. She told me she had her back broken twice. Once by a horse. I asked her what she did as an adult and if she was married. She told me that she had quit school in the third grade to help her family survive, and that she had always wanted to finish. She told me she married young, when she was 17. " I shouldn't have," she said with the twinkle in her eye. "He loved all the ladies." "Oh how handsome he was." She said he only hit her once. "Maybe it was becaused we fussed at each other so." She said she is not sure why he ended up marrying her... " I was a red headed freckle face girl." He did marry her though and they had four children in four years. She told me that she had often told him that he was going to get killed out there on the railroad and he assured her that he would be fine, nothing would happen to him. Sure enough, he was killed. He was drunk and fell from one of the cars onto the tracks and was crushed by a freight train. "I was left with four children and no means to provide for them." She said. She mentioned how handsome he was again, and how he loved the ladies... He was a handsome, womanizing, drunken pig but she loved him. She told me that her second husband was a bachelor and was a good man. He always treated her nicely and she said that if she would get cross or mean he would say, "Don't you think that's a dreadful thing to say? Aren't you ashamed?" She said it make her think about what she said before she said it. She was married to him for four years when one evening they were eating dinner and he stood up and fell over dead. Four years.. She said after that she didn't marry again until she was 80. Then she married a minister and was with him until he died. I just thought this was so bizarre. To bury three husbands. The first two in her before she was forty. How tragic. I am getting tired so I won't bother writing the rest tonight. I just really enjoyed talking to her. We can learn so much from other people if we just take the time to listen to them.
After helping him to his room, changing, and putting him down for a nap I looked to help pass out trays to the residents who choose to eat in their rooms. As luck would have it on my second tray to be delivered I came into the room and this lady was sitting on the edge of her bed. I called her by name and asked her if she was ready for lunch. She replied yes, could I turn the lights on? The lights were on, overhead, end table lamp and the shade were up allowing the afternoon sun to shine brightly in onto the empty bed on the other side of the small room. "I can't see" She says again. My heart just sank. I am seeing myself in sixty years, I think to myself. I tell her that the lights are on and that I will stay with her and help her with lunch. She thanks me several times telling me that she just can't see to get around. I sit beside her on the bed and get her tray ready. I take her silverware and put them in her right hand. I then take that hand and "show" her where all the items are on her tray. meat, above that bread, to to the left carrots, and above them is a piece of chocolate cake. She readies her spoon and I put the napkin in her lap, (telling her first so she doesn't think I am molesting or robbing her.) To pass the amount of time between bites (it takes longer to eat as you get older) I make small talk with her. I love doing this with the older residents. Most of them have had so many different experiences and lives and it's wonderful to hear about them. She is nintey seven. She was born in Oklahoma but her Daddy was a farmer who always wanted to do better so they moved a lot growing up. She told me they would just get a nice house and get settled and he would move them. "He ended up with nothing" She said. She had two older brothers and before the "others" came her daddy used to play the fiddle and have her and her brothers dance. "Oh he taught us to dance!" She said, and her pale blue eyes lit up behind her thick glasses. The "others" turned out to me four more brothers and three more sisters. She said when the others started coming that daddy worked all the time and didn't play the fiddle anymore. During this time I am helping her with various foods and she eventually uses her finger to push the food onto the spoon after locating both food and spoon. She tells me about picking cotton, and how when the depression came the cotton wasn't worth anything and fields of the white fluff would go without being picked. She said that most people couldn't afford to pay someone to help pick it, because it was almost worthless. They turned the cows in on it. She told me she had her back broken twice. Once by a horse. I asked her what she did as an adult and if she was married. She told me that she had quit school in the third grade to help her family survive, and that she had always wanted to finish. She told me she married young, when she was 17. " I shouldn't have," she said with the twinkle in her eye. "He loved all the ladies." "Oh how handsome he was." She said he only hit her once. "Maybe it was becaused we fussed at each other so." She said she is not sure why he ended up marrying her... " I was a red headed freckle face girl." He did marry her though and they had four children in four years. She told me that she had often told him that he was going to get killed out there on the railroad and he assured her that he would be fine, nothing would happen to him. Sure enough, he was killed. He was drunk and fell from one of the cars onto the tracks and was crushed by a freight train. "I was left with four children and no means to provide for them." She said. She mentioned how handsome he was again, and how he loved the ladies... He was a handsome, womanizing, drunken pig but she loved him. She told me that her second husband was a bachelor and was a good man. He always treated her nicely and she said that if she would get cross or mean he would say, "Don't you think that's a dreadful thing to say? Aren't you ashamed?" She said it make her think about what she said before she said it. She was married to him for four years when one evening they were eating dinner and he stood up and fell over dead. Four years.. She said after that she didn't marry again until she was 80. Then she married a minister and was with him until he died. I just thought this was so bizarre. To bury three husbands. The first two in her before she was forty. How tragic. I am getting tired so I won't bother writing the rest tonight. I just really enjoyed talking to her. We can learn so much from other people if we just take the time to listen to them.
posted by bib at
9:26 PM
3 Comments:
It's amazing how much life experience our older generation have. I loved listening to my grandmother when she was around, she worked cotton fields too when she was younger, and she said there was a certain way one had to pick it or they would cut or hurt their fingers. And lugging those big heavy sacks around until they filled them up... that, and just general life back in those days.
This reminds that as much as i complain about life, I've really have nothing to compain about. Those people had it so tough, and it was the way of life for them, so they didn't compain. To go through three husbands and two broken backs... that's a trooper!
By
Jay, at 7:08 AM
You should become a book writer, you do good on how you put your words. Strikes the reader's eye.
By
Anonymous, at 9:27 PM
Thank you.. anonymous poster... I reread my blog and found it full of errors and typos, as usual. I thank you for the compliment though. I just wanted those of you who read it to see it how I did. Plus, I wanted to be able to remember it later myself. :)
By
bib, at 9:38 PM
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