Hello friends!!
First off I want to give myself a pat on the back for doing MULTIPLE posts within the same month! Are we not proud? Because I'm proud. Anyway, I hope you are enjoying these posts, and I invite you to vote for the subjects of my future posts! You can do that on the side poll to the right. I would super appreciate if you could do that!
I don't know if many of you guys know, but I work in a nursing home. It is super rewarding work, and I love every single one of my residents. They are fantastic, and I think of each one of them as family. Whenever any of them have to go out to the hospital, or they're sick, it hurts like my mom, dad, or grandparent is sick. Don't even get me started when they come "home" after a long time away from us, it feels awesome! We had a resident return today and I almost hugged him without asking him if that was okay, because I missed him so much!
Anyway, the reason I brought up my occupation is because my story/life lesson/rant for the day is in relation to it. Unfortunately, with this job, some of my residents leave us in a most permanent way. It's very hard, especially if I know the resident personally. Yesterday we lost one of our residents, one I was particularly close with. Let's call him Moe. Moe and I had an interesting relationship. Moe was in the grips of dementia, which has hit home for me in multiple ways, but mostly in the way that my grandfather suffered with dementia before he passed away. But Moe would mutter nonsensical things. One day I asked him after a slew of words, "are you planning to take over the world?" to that he answered, "yes". From then on, our relationship was very much like Pinky and The Brain. Whenever I'd visit him, we would plan to take over the world; all before lunch time.
Unfortunately Moe left us yesterday. When I learned of this, I was pretty sad, but knew that this was coming. I went up to Moe's room to pay my respects and say goodbye. I was almost brought to tears. All of our little stories and quips instantly came back to me, and I held back the tears and the hiccups. For some reason, this one hurt more. I've now worked at my place of employment for just about five months. You get close with the people you work with, residents and co-workers. So I guess I've hit that marker where I've started to form meaningful relationships with the residents, no matter how far into dementia they are in, or whatever ailment they are battling.
I looked toward my friend, and started to walk closer to him. I was interrupted by someone, wreaking of alcohol, asking me why I was there and what I was doing. I realized it was another resident's family member. I was polite and motioned toward my friend who had recently passed, but unfortunately my message didn't seem to get through. So I left the room. The man that spoke to me followed me out to the hallway and into the elevator. He proceeded to tell me that I was cute, and he would tell everyone he knew about me.
Now, I don't know if it was the booze, if it was the lack of knowledge, or if that was really who he was, but I was not impressed by how this person composed himself. He should not have interrupted my time with my friend; especially while I was saying my final goodbye. He also had no right to follow me out of the room, and pester me.
He followed me into the elevator. He told me a lot of things that I don't wish to impart on this blog. He said I was cute and he would tell all of his family. Okay... If I had given him my number and we had planned a date... THAT would have been occasion to tell everyone he knew. But I'm just like you. You don't need to tell everyone that you met someone who just happens to be 4ft tall, dyed red headed, and blue eyed. That's possibly about 25% of the world's population... maybe? But what I'm trying to say is, I'm just like any other person. I am a worker of that nursing home, and I deserve any respect that you would give to any other worker.
Death is not an easy thing to deal with. It's one of those final things that we don't fully understand. We don't quite know the exact time when it's going to come. We know when someone is going to leave on a flight for a vacation, and we know when we're going to see them again. Fortunately, with modern technology we can even call that person while they're gone. But we can't call heaven. We can't ask God when we are going to see our loved ones again, and we sure as heck can't ask when they're going to leave us for that undetermined period of time.
As I said before, I love my residents. I love them more than chocolate, and that's a lot. I want the best for them; through life and death. I want to be able to peacefully say goodbye to them, without being interrupted. It's a lot... To see a friend leave this world. But you don't need to be different to know that. Just because I am smaller, does not give you the right to stare at me, say how cute and little I am. I am an adult; 23 years old. You wouldn't say that to an average height person would you?
Please know, that I understand that everyone walks a different path... but I know that everyone, and I mean EVERYONE deserves respect.
Peace, Love, and Otters my friends! <3
Laura
I dedicate this post to Emma Cook <3
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