The Residents

In the nursing home where I work, there are several types of residents. There are those that are just old and have no one else to take care of them, there are those that are not so old but have very limited intelligence and there are those that are both.

I would like to "introduce" you to a few of the residents:

First there is Mary. Mary is about 45 years old, confined to a wheel chair with limited intelligence. She wears a straw cowboy hat and neighs like a horse most of the time. My first meeting with Mary, she asked me if I was feeble minded, I told her I didn't think so (honestly, it depends on the day). She wanted to play an electronic game of 20 questions. She had to think of an object, animal, person or other. I will give you one guess what Mary was thinking about (if you didn't guess it was a horse). The electronic game guessed that Mary was thinking of a pony. Mary insisted this was incorrect then informed me it was a white, black and red horse. When I questioned Mary about the red coloring, she looked quite shocked that I did not know. "It has a red asshole", Mary said. Ahhh, it does make sense now doesn't it?

Next there is Stephen. Stephen is about 60 years old, confined to a wheel chair with limited intelligence as well. On my second day at the home I said "Hey, how are you?"to Stephen. Now everyday when he sees me at breakfast and lunch he repeats in a very loud voice "HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY". He continues to repeat it until food is in his mouth. I am not kidding, he loves the word and will say only that word for 30 minutes or more. You can imagine how popular I am with the rest of the staff for introducing Stephen to the word. As my punishment, the other staff members have also started saying HEY to me a LOT.

Then there is Irene. Irene is about 85 years old. It is obvious that Irene was a super good looking woman in her younger years, and she is still quite the flirt. Irene has been one of my favorites from day one. She likes to talk about her ex and late husbands and boyfriends that she once had. Today, was kinda sad. She did not know who I was today. She carried a baby doll with her all day. She fed it, held it, loved it and let all of the other residents admire her baby. When I spoke to one of the nurses about Irene, she informed me that Irene has lived at the home for 6 years and very rarely has a visitor. The nurse told me that for months when Irene first arrived she would not come out of her room voluntarily and it caused her great stress when she was forced to join the common areas. A member of the nursing staff gave her the doll to give her something to love and ever since she spends most days in the common area.

I hope Irene remembers me tomorrow. I want her to know that I am there for her.