Walking off the elevator, the stench hits you sometimes like a ton of bricks. It is the smell of dirty diapers and hospital food that really impregnates your senses. It is not a pleasant odor and it lingers with you for sometime after you leave.
Institutions have to be the most depressing places on earth, men and woman sick and dying, some mulling about waiting for nothing in particular. Perhaps waiting to die because if you look around that is all that surrounds you.
Yet when you really see and when you become accustomed to the smells your outlook will change. There are people who are lonely and in desperate need of companionship, a smile, a friendly hello. If you can engage yourself in the humanity of it all it becomes clear that you have to forgive the sights and smells and bring your focus instead to the faces. Faces with a thousand stories to tell; faces that look at you as though you were alien. Alien because you do not stoop and creak when you walk, and you don’t have shoes that are too big or too small. You are put together and your hair is done. The people you meet when you come off the elevator are marked with years of living. They drag themselves around in walkers and wheelchairs and canes. Because to walk is to really be alive. Some never move; they are it seems forever glued to their chairs, heads dipped as though in prayer, drool falling from parted lips.
I often think of the movie Gilbert Grape when the obese mother tells someone else in the film “I didn’t always look like this.” That line comes back to me when I would visit my mom at her nursing home. Those faces, those men and women, were not always old either. They had lives and loves and worked and dreamed just like we do. Yet we find the elderly sometimes to be repulsive and useless, youth is far too privileged.
The people who work daily with the elderly often tell them “I love you.” The orderlies who wash these aged people, who take care of them when they are sick and smelly and when they drool, they are indeed heroes. They are the epitome of spirituality because they see beyond the wrinkles and smells and the things others find revolting. They see the humanity of the elderly, the raw beauty of aging, and embrace it. Those men and women who call their patients “darling and sweetheart” should be commended time and time again for the work they do in nursing homes. For the hours they put in, for the patience they show each of their darlings on the floor.
The faces in the crowd coming off the elevator were not always like they are now. They deserve to have someone care for them and hold them and say “I love you”. They are beautiful in their skin, their eyes longing for connection, eager to converse. It is important to stop and listen and perhaps learn something powerful in the process. The elderly are not dead, and they long to have someone take their hand and ask them “how are you doing today?”
Sometimes what we find unappealing is what we need. Sometimes a reality check is the best thing someone could have. We are all going to age, some of us perhaps better than others. Will there come a time when people be repelled by us, by our odor, our wrinkles, our crooked and twisted bodies? Maybe, maybe not, or maybe we will find it a lucky thing if we go before we become so disfigured and old. Either way may God help us if we are left without someone to bear witness to our agedness. To grow old is terrifying enough; to grow old without a loved one by your side is a brutally horrific thought.
The next time you meet an elderly person, take their hand and even if they have an odd smell about them, show them kindness for it may be the only act of kindness they have been witness to in a long, long time. Your deed will not go unrewarded; your action will help others to see and to witness that there really is beauty in growing old.
Image Credit
Elderly woman with fur collar via Microsoft Office Clip-art
Dear Martha:
Thank you for this lovely piece. I absolutely agree that those who care for the elderly in facilities such as the one your Mom is in are truly unsung heroes. For all that they must deal with they are certainly not well paid, so they must be very special angels to be doing the work that they do, so lovingly and often so happily. I remember a young man who worked in the Alzheimer’s ward of the care home in which my father was resident. I will never forget the tender care that he cheerfully gave to my Dad and to others in the ward and how sad he was when my father passed away.
Be kind to our elderly, yes. We do forget in our busy lives. How much they have to pass on – their experiences of life that perhaps some of could learn from. Excellent Martha!!!!!