Back at the seniors

Miya and I went back to see the seniors today. We haven’t been there much this summer since things have been a bit crazy and schedules have gone awry.

But Miya and I were looking at some photos on last night and came across some pictures of a visit to the seniors in June. I asked her if she’d like to go see them again and she said yes. She seemed to be having second thoughts in the morning, especially while we were sitting at a coffee shop eating muffins and watching excavators dig up the road (she told me she wanted to stay there “all night”), but once she saw the seniors’ residence, she was excited to go in.

Even though we’ve only been there a handful of times in the last few months, I was impressed by how much Miya and many of the seniors remembered each other and were comfortable together. She walked up to many of them and greeted them by name. They respond to her like flowers to the sun.

“Look, our little girl’s come to visit us,” the staff will say when we arrive and old, sleepy faces lift and light up.

The residents are often sleeping when we arrive and Miya will go up to some of her favourites and put her hand on their knee or hand. “Wake up!” she’ll say, but doesn’t insist if they aren’t roused.

Many of the residents want to reach out and touch her, but she generally keeps a bit of distance. But today a lovely old man with kind, blue eyes, asked if she would shake his hand – and she did happily. He was thrilled.

One of the residents is a tall, broad-shouldered woman who has a gaping mouth void of teeth which broadens into big cavernous smiles when she sees Miya. Today she kept blowing kisses at her and at times the two were laughing with each other and clapping their hands. 97 years difference between the two.

Being back at the seniors again today with Miya reminded me of how richer our lives can be when we reach out and how easy it can be to brighten someone’s life.

Fridays with my daughter

Since shortly after Christmas I have spent nearly every day, all day, with my daughter. Until this week, that is, which has been a bit of a transition. While I’m very excited about my new job and enjoying the opportunity to be back at work, I find myself missing Miya a lot more than I had expected.

So I look forward to Fridays, my one-on-one day with my little girl.

We have a very busy morning, starting with gymnastics at 9:15 (we are almost always a few minutes late). Most of the class is little circuits in various parts of the large gym area – things like walking along balance beam of various heights, hanging from the rings, climbing, crawling, jumping. The instructor will assist kids through movements like somersaults on the beam or over the bar. She had M doing headstands and backbends today. M is really good about letting the instructor flip her around, although she gets a very serious expression at the time.

After gymnastics, it’s straight from there to the senior’s centre where we spend an hour visiting and playing. M was fantastic today – she had wanted to bring along her WWF orangutan this morning and she was proudly showing it off to the seniors. I’d suggest a resident she could show it to and she’d run over and put the furry little orangutan in their hands or on their lap. Sometimes they would dozing off and wake to find a little person thrusting a bright orange animal at them. But they always responded with joy. She’d sometimes let them hold it for a few seconds, then she’d take it back and come running back to me. I’d point out someone else in the room who might like to see it, and she’d head off. Very cute.

After our visit, we head back home for lunch and nap. Then in the afternoon we’ll go out and do some errands – probably going to pick up Valentine’s cards today since she loves decorating cards. Colouring and putting stickers on cards for her friends will likely easily fill up the rest of our afternoon.

Time goes quickly when we’re having fun with someone we love.

Saturday Bingo

I am late getting to Ann's room, so she is getting ready for Bingo on her own. Slumped forward in her wheelchair, she is trying to attach the footrests.
"I didn't think you were coming," she says.

"I'm sorry I'm late." I attach the footrests and then ask if she needs anything else before going downstairs to the common room where Bingo is held each Saturday at 2:00.

"I think I should use the washroom," she whispers. Ann, who is in her 90s, has Parkinson's and in addition to robbing her of most of her mobility and sight, this disease is taking away her voice. I have to lean in very close to hear her words. Her hearing is also failing, so conversation is limited.

I wheel her into the washroom and pull down her pants and underwear so she can use the toilet. As she has grown increasingly weak in the last year she has become almost indifferent to the assistance she needs in performing what most of us take for granted as a very private task. I have become accustomed to, but never unaware of, the pale flesh hanging in loose, wrinkled folds on bone-thin legs, the monstrous plastic underpants, the way her legs dangle when she sits on the seat...

After this task is finished, I fix her sparse but silky-soft grey hair into a thin clip at the back of her head, fetch her small purse and we are ready to go down for Bingo.

It is busy today; over a dozen residents, many accompanied by family. I take Ann to her regular place and greet the others at the table - the sharp-witted German lady who plays four cards and watches everyone else's to make sure they don't miss a number, and Mr. D, the other senior I visit on Sundays.

I search through the stack of Bingo cards for Ann's lucky numbers - 8 and 13 and in the upper left hand corner. (I'm not too fussy about the cards I take for myself, but I must have picked right today since I win the first game.)

The man who calls Bingo is a volunteer who has been spending his Saturdays here for years. He has a thick German accent, but enunciates clearly and speaks slowly into the microphone, so everyone hears him. Each game is played in the same order each week, but he never fails to remind us which game we are playing - one line any direction, full card, four corners, little fence around the house...

To play a card for an hour costs only 25 cents, so this is not expensive entertainment. Neither is it fast paced. I keep an eye on Ann's card and point out numbers she misses - but she usually doesn't need my help. As I wait for our numbers to be called, I look around the room.

...A man with and baseball cap on long, greying hair, thick sideburns and a burly chest holds his mother's hand and helps her cover the numbers on her card.

...A woman is sitting beside her elderly mother on the other side of the room. Several times during the hour mother leans toward her and says loudly, "I love you".

"I love you too," her daughter always replies and I always smile to hear them and watch the elderly woman lean toward her daughter with a full, childlike smile and the daughter place her arm around her mother's shoulders.

After the last game has been called, Ann agrees to stay for tea and crackers, so I fetch two cups and a plate of soda crackers and processed cheese from behind the bar. She forgot to put in her lower dentures, but still manages to eat a couple of crackers. She doesn't eat much these days and I don't know how she can afford to lose any more weight, so I am glad to see her eat even this much.

When she is done I take her back upstairs to her room and make sure she is comfortably in her reclining chair before leaving. So many times I have said good-bye to Ann at the end of a visit and wondered if I would ever see her again. She tells me often that she wants to die, and yet her disfigured body refuses to give up. All I can do, today as any other day, is to say good-bye, tell her I will be back next week. She thanks me for taking her to Bingo; I tell her it was my pleasure. It really was.

lapses (& Bingo)

Isn't it odd? The longer there is a silence, the harder it is to fill. Like sitting beside a stranger in a small room. If you don't make conversation quickly, it becomes almost impossible to do so the more that time goes by.

I keep waiting for something profound to happen in my life that I could write about. Or perhaps come across some interesting news item. A funny story to tell... But days pass and the silence is harder to drown out.

What to say? I played Bingo today at the seniors' centre. Usually my elderly friend has another friend who takes her down to Bingo each Saturday. Today her regular Bingo partner couldn't make it and called to see if I could fill in.

She was waiting when I arrived, her teeth on her lap. Without them she looks 50 years older and I was worried she was having a bad day. But she insisted she was up for it. A few minutes later, teeth in and $0.50 in hand, she was ready to go.

I found her two lucky cards - one with the 8, the other with the 13 in the top left corner. (For myself I chose two with 11 in that spot - figured I would either double my luck, or un-luck that way.) My friend seldom wins, but faith in her cards is unshaken.

Perhaps it was these cards (though I'd like to think I brought her luck today) - she won a game. I called out Bingo! for her since today she could barely raise her voice above a whisper. I don't think I've ever won a game of Bingo in my life, so it was nice to get to shout it out.

Afterward we had tea, crackers and cubes of cheddar cheese. I saw her looking at the snack dispenser nearby and asked her if she wanted anything. We both agreed that Mars bars are much too sweet. She likes Oh Henry!, but there weren't any. I suggested M&Ms, since they are easily shared. "No," she said. "I don't want to put on weight" - coming from a woman practically paralyzed with Parkinson's who is in her 93rd year, the idea that she still worries about her weight makes me laugh with pleasure. How tightly we hold on to our ideals of self, despite everything. That she is still concerned about gaining weight tells me she has not given up all hope yet, no matter what she may say some days.

I'm sure there are feminists who would be appalled to hear that an elderly, wheelchair-bound woman is still concerned about such idealized vanities as a slim form. But I love that she still thinks about her figure - though masked under plastic underpants and ill-fitting dresses. I love that she is trying to grow out her hair, so white and fine it is a like a thin gauze on her pink scalp.

I wonder what things I will still be worrying about if I should be so lucky, or un-lucky, to live to 92.

waiting and being waited for

Just south of Ottawa's trendy Glebe area is a tower of rooms where seniors with physical and mental disabilities spend their days waiting. They wait for their meals - which are always late and usually unappetizing. They wait for their pills, for coffee hour, for bingo on Saturdays... Many of them are just waiting to die.

I have seen indignity personified in an elderly woman sitting on the toilet, her back curved forward, her feet suspended a few inches from the ground, her pants and underwear bunched at her ankles. Sometimes she will be like this for half an hour, waiting for someone to come and help her get down. Waiting in helpless pain.

"Why doesn't God just let me die?" she has asked me the last two times I have visited her. "This isn't living."

She is 91-years old and was diagnosed with Parkinson's ten years ago. Some days she can stand on her own, other days she cannot keep her eyes open or speak on the telephone. She is at the mercy of nurses in an under-funded, under-staffed care centre. "I feel neglected," she has said numerous times. She tells me her frustrations with the poor care, the poor food that does little to tempt a stomach nauseated by medication. I find myself always at a loss for words. "That must be frustrating," I say.

"It is," she replies softly. Sometimes she is so frustrated she breaks down in tears.

One day when I came by, two other women from her floor were visiting with her in her room. I thought this was nice and told her so. Apparently they were talking about how they all just wished they could die.

It's hard to know what to say when she tells me she doesn't want to keep living. Death is too prevalent lately. I tell her that I enjoy her company, that she is like family to me. But I know that does not change her situation. I would not want to live as she lives. No one should have to live like this.

Often I feel helpless when I am with her. Helpless in the face of her pain, her despair. I know that being there I offer some comfort, but some days it feels like I am watering the desert with a bucket. I leave sometimes wanting to rant about under-funded public care and the indifference of our society that abandons its elderly to such towers of neglect. And yet visiting her has also brought me some subtle joys.

There have been many times in the last few years when I had few people around who cared about me. Loneliness is a dark emotion. But I always knew that there was a woman in the Glebe who would be watching the clock on Sundays, waiting for me to come. Every time I visit her I feel appreciated. Every time I see her she thanks me for coming. Every time I enter her room she smiles.

It's both a responsibility and a humbling pleasure to be waited for.