WRA-130 Ellie Jensen

Ellie Jensen –A48617291

Professor Limbu WRA 130-001

January 28, 2014

Manor Care Memories

I never thought I was going to cry. My plan was to crank out fifty hours as quickly as possible, slipping in between practices and after school racking up as much time as I could before December 14th. Fifty hours of volunteering for a psych final and I chose Manor Care health services. I never thought I was going to cry, but I did.

Judy was my boss for all intent purposes. Head of the social calendar I followed her around hanging up decorations for up coming holidays, passing out event pamphlets and going from room to room seeing who was up for evening bingo. Manor Care was not a nursing home; it provided a transition between the hospital and home for patients who were recovering from severe medical treatments or surgeries. Some patients however, that were extremely elderly and required continual medical assistance, stay for years and at times, till the end of their lives. Manor care was brilliant; at first glance it could have easily been perceived as a nursing home but the staff was much more qualified and the patients were heavily dependent upon them.

Access to health services is vital. When an elderly patient was admitted to Manor Care their concerns and fears were addressed. They weren’t put in a room and forgotten. They were immersed at a place where needed services were provided. Residency there provided them the time needed to grow comfortable with and trusting of the providers of their care. Manor Care provides tailored treatment plans, hospital-level rehabilitation therapies and, because the hopeful outcome is a healed patient, the recreational activities to help transition them back into their old lives. Manor Care was able to send home 89% of their patients by the projected time of discharge.

However, learning more about the tenuous conditions of some of the patient’s brought pressure to avoid life-threatening situations when physically assisting them. There were frequent times that I needed to wear gloves and/or a mouth mask or intensely wash my hands instantly after leaving their room, so that I was not accountable for the contamination of another patient or myself. Manor Care showed me an unexpected amount of responsibility. I was shocked at how trusting the staff was as I roamed the halls freely, speaking to and assisting the patients. In no means did I feel inept to the tasks, but as a seventeen year old it was refreshing to be treated as an adult. I was quite a young face walking the halls. The next youngest, excluding grandchildren visiting, were the nursing assistants, it still place nearly ten years between us. Nevertheless, Judy trusted me, and the staff respected that.

Judy, a woman I never expected to grow so fond of, was a woman that turned volunteering for fifty hours into over a hundred. The woman that shed a tear along side me when I logged for the last time. Judy loved this place and they loved her. She loved coming to work like she loved her precious cat Dalsey, which was on displayed in twenty-three pictures in her office. She came into work excited to catch up with the patients and tell them of the mischief that her silver feline had gotten into that morning. She made me feel welcome and needed. I got to know the patients, a few, quite well. There was Ruth who grew up on a huge plantation styled home and her father was a veterinarian and Nell the daughter of a nature artist and Sister Rose who was about the only person I’ve seen with a constant smile even when she doses off during Bingo. They loved sharing stories about their life and asking me about mine. After school one Friday, before a basketball game, I came in my cheerleading uniform and Nell ask how I would “you know ra-ra-ra yell”. Rex asked me if I was “one of the people who started the chants.” Telling them I was in high school brought several hefty sighs and smirks from the long mahogany table set in the center of the dining hall. It was three O’clock, time for a coloring or crafting activity. Sister Rose was educated in a classroom of five with 30 kids in her graduating class. She couldn’t believe my graduating class had over nine hundred.

It was stories that gave me such a connection to these people. It reminded me that all you have when your body is giving way, when your mind starts to dwindle, is memories. Whether you can recite them or not doesn’t matter. They’re yours, yours to cherish and remember as markings in your life. The things that cause unintentional emotions to surface such as songs, smells or images have triggered a memory from their past. Your life, every heart beat of it, is moving along with time and it’s only your memories that can take you back to revisit any of it. The people who are most talkative, most hopeful or energetic are the brave individuals who stole their neighbor’s horse to get to school on time. Closed their eyes and cliff jumped into the ocean hand in hand with their best friend. People who already lost the ones they loved, one of the few alive in their generation, but still carry a youthful smile. It’s the old bodies with young souls who refuse to fall into the depressing doldrums of elderly age. The best was when Sidney, a ninety-two year old black woman, was well enough to be wheeled in to join programs. This woman had one tooth, no dentures and loved to talk. It took a while to figure out what she was saying, but just watching her was memorizing. Her expressions were wide and exuberant, her hand gestures sprang her from her wheel chair and her laugh was about as genuine as a baby’s.

Sidney wasn’t looking for an in depth conversation. She wasn’t looking to learn. She was waiting for a moment to tell people about her life. A verbal memoir spilling out of her any chance she got. To let people know she wasn’t always like this. To let you know she had lived. If she had her way she would be back on that horse with the rush of adrenaline knowing her father was going to come to school having realized what she’d been up too. She wanted to be remembered, as she remembered her-self. Craving everyone to experience her life, full and equal as any other.

There were always the repercussions of working with elderly individuals. I learned first hand the damage loss can do to someone. I walked in the first week of December to find Judy crying and a picture of a beautiful woman, dolled up in a long beaded dress, was laying on her desk. The frame was cracked and the picture frayed, but it didn’t diminish how unmistakably gorgeous the woman was. “She was a professional ballroom dancer, and p-passed away last night p-peacefully in her sleep.” Huffing and sniveling, “Its always hard,” she expressed dragging a tissue under her eyes, “It’s understandable and its something you have to prepare for, but it doesn’t take away how hard it is.” It goes to impress further how dedicated these individuals become to one another. Judy loved this place; she was married in the halls here. But having that crinkled image on her desk proved she understood the patients better then anyone. When you get to a certain age, the dynamic of your life shifts from creating memories, to passing them on. In a humanistic sense the closest thing to immortality we have. Our name lasting through the ages. It is what we do with our lives, that determines how long we truly live. In a spiritual sense how influential we’ve become. There will always be hardships in everyone’s life time, always be moments when you suppress unwanted events, but in everyone’s life there are also moments that you know deep in your gut the instant it happens, you’ll never forget. Moments you undoubtedly love, moments that define a person and all you can do is hope when your time has come you’ve made enough of an impression that others will remember it as well. The love of a memory so dear to someone it would be a tragedy if it died with them. For with memories although you may be gone, you will not be forgotten.