Not too long ago...
...at Mom's facility I was wandering the floors looking for the drinking water wagon when I passed by a woman in a wheel chair moaning repeatedly, "I don't want to shit on the floor, I don't want to shit on the floor..."
    This caught my ear. As I passed the nurse in charge of the woman's floor that day I mentioned, "You know, that makes sense to me. I don't want to shit on the floor, either."
    The nurse chuckled and mentioned that she not only agreed but that if you take the time to listen to a lot of the residents, their concerns aren't demented, it's just their method of expressing them that's hard for the rest of us to take.
    The next day, on yet another hunt for the water wagon, I passed the same nurse on the same floor and said, "Say something outrageous today!"
    She smiled and said, "Just say it quietly, or..." and then she burst into a very familiar line of a very familiar song that I sing to my mother a lot in the bathroom, "'I'll be seeing you in all the most familiar places...'"
    No additional commentary, this time. Just wanted to mention it.
    Oh, one other incident of which I am now reminded. There's a woman on one of the floors, not sure which one because, although she's wheelchair bound, she's very mobile and you can encounter her just about anywhere at any time. She reaches out, grabs people's arms in a vise grip and says, a naughty glint in her eye, "Come with me, baby!" When she caught me a while back, I grinned at her and said, "Okay, baby, where are we going?"
    Her mouth dropped. She released my arm and stared at me. For some reason which I can't quite define I felt bad that I'd unintentionally confounded her. I patted her arm and said, "Come and get me when you know where we're going. I'll be down that hall, and I'm definitely interested."
    That seemed to bring her out of her momentary stupor. She grinned, nodded, and patted my arm in response.
    She hasn't come to get me, yet, but, when she does, I'm going.
    Gotta go. Big day today. "They'll" be meeting around noon to discuss my mother's, among other's, institutional fate, thus, I have a memo to deliver before the meeting.
    Later.
- posted by Gail Rae @ 07:38   email  this post