Every evening, I stride down the hall and pass a certain door. The door displays a large sign: Happy Birthday, Rudy! Last year, pasted around the sign were colorful stickers that said Happy 100! A few months ago, the stickers were changed to say Happy 101!In all the times I've walked by that door, I have never seen it open. I have not heard a peep from beyond that door, not a radio, television, or murmuring pastor. I have not smelled poop as I passed. Is there a human in that room? Who, I wonder, is Rudy?
Tonight I saw an aide enter the room carrying a large garbage bag. That means someone is in there. I picture a stinky wizened man in a bed, gnarled and still, waiting for family that never comes. Well, I'm making up that story, for sure. They probably come on Sundays after church like normal people.
A few nights ago, Mom told me she was awakened from a nap on her couch to find her neighbor Dan's hand on her forehead.
Mom's neighbor Dan is a thin, long-faced grizzled man who has severe dementia and doesn't talk much. Normally, Dan gets around very slowly in a wheelchair. Apparently, nobody knew he could walk. When I mentioned my mother's story to an aide, she said, “Yes, we saw Dan in your mother's doorway. He's walking!” I told her Dan had paid a visit to my mother as she slept on her couch. “It's a miracle!” the aide said.
I sat next to her on the couch in my usual spot and switched the channel from the Flintstones to Love It or List It. I looked at Mom to gauge her level of concern.
“You could take him, I think,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” she said promptly. “I could take him.”
It isn't hard to imagine Mom and Dan ending up on the carpet in a slow-motion tangle of fragile limbs. Nobody will win that match.
“If it happens again, you can push him away or yell at him,” I said. “Then ring your call button.”
“It will be five minutes before anyone shows up,” she said.
“Well, punch his lights out, then.”
“Okay.”
I turned back to the TV. “All-righty then. What do you think, are they going to love it or list it?”
Yesterday I caught a bus downtown just after dawn to attend a five-hour workshop on business basics for small business startups. Five of the twelve attendees, me included, were volunteer mentors-in-training. The remainder were a motley group of hopefuls seeking information and advice. We packed shoulder-to-shoulder in a tiny room that alternated between stifling hot and freezing cold. The woman sitting by the projector kept bumping it, knocking the image askew on the screen.
I sat by the wall and sipped homemade coffee from a little cup, trying desperately to stay awake as the speakers droned on about business plans, banking, finance, record-keeping, and marketing. A lot of the material was familiar to me. I could teach most of it myself, and I have. I imagine I will volunteer to present something in that tiny stifling room at some point. They really need some PowerPoint help. In between drawing funny faces in my notebook, I reconfigured the tables and chairs in my mind.
At noon, I ate my homemade lunch of toasted oats, apple, raisins, and soy milk alone in a small break room down the hall. People who went out of the building came back and reported having a disappointing experience at McDonald's. At two-thirty, we were released. I gathered up my rain gear, made a pit stop in the restroom, and hiked a block to the bus stop.
The bus home was a long time coming but the rain held off until I was a few blocks from home. I shucked off my rain gear, fed my annoyed cat, and burrowed into my couch until it was time to visit Mom.
