Majestic and Waiting
It was a nice place, Holyoke Skilled Nursing Facility. Everyone said so. Everyone thought so, from the occasional grand-kids that showed up to visit their respective grand-parents to the mildly uncomfortable, mildly optimistic, mildly obligated grown sons and daughters that came in fatigued, shepherding the kids in for a quick after-school visit. Even the residents themselves likely thought so - though it was admittedly hard to tell what, if anything, they were thinking as they sat all day wheel-chair bound and parked in the halls like so many old, abandoned cars.
Some of them even seemed to enjoy their time there, as if putting up some sort of happy facade would somehow signify their refusal to simply be abandoned, would somehow make them independent, strong people again. As if, behind a shield of optimism and joy they could pretend they were just normal people, going shopping, getting their hair done, going to baseball games. So they seemed to think.
But any visitor could tell the difference between the abandoned and those that refused to be abandoned... a smile that became a grin, a friendly hi in the hallway, a head held high. Recipe-talk with the nurses. Plans for life when they would be well enough to leave. Dinner at 6:00, Bingo at 7:00. People that lived, and by living, were impossible to forget, to put away like some dusty toy on a disinterested child's shelf.
Louisa was one of those who were quite, quite abandoned and subsequently didn't really bother to live. The mere fact that she was indeed alive was thanks to doctors who knew how to deal with stroke, not to her won vivacity and determination. Determination, she had thought once. What for? What did she have left to do in life that required any determination?
As far as she was concerned, she was doing all she needed to be doing - waiting, mainly. "Hmmm, waiting for what?" the perky, pretty nurse, the blonde one had once asked kindly without really caring. "I think you might be better than me at waiting... oops, there we go... yeah... just scoot you up a little bit there... there we go, all tucked up in bed..."
Well why else would she be enduring all of this? The embarrassment of being so vulnerable, so weak, being unable to change position in the night... being forced to ring for the nurse, to clutch the girl"s lean, straining shoulders with weak, bird-boned fingers as she heaved her up higher in bed. It was a hell of a way to go. Lousia did not want to go that way. Which was likely the main reason she stuck around, holding lackluster onto life - waiting.
She wasnt quite sure what would happen as the end result of all this waiting, but she fantasized it would be big. A lot of light. A lot of noise, good noise. A lot of love and joy. Something majestic... Trumpets, perhaps, welcoming her home? The absurdity of the thought made her grin, an absent, semi-toothless grin that was a bit lopsided thanks to the stroke. The nurses smiled back when she grinned at her own ridiculous thoughts, perhaps mistaking her amusement as being directed at them. The visitors, come to see the jolly, heavy-set old lady down the hall, usually looked elsewhere. They did not w ant to see an immobile, lopsided, saliva-dribbling woman grinning at them as they went down the hall.
Perfectly understandable. Perhaps they didn't want to see because they didn't want to believe that they could find themselves in exactly the same situation someday. So they didn't look at her, as if she was merely an extremely uninteresting landmark by the road of life.
Which she could deal with. She was used to abandonment... it didn't anger or hurt her. It merely.. gave her time to imagine what all this waiting would bring. An absence of pain? A finally happy day, though "happy" was hardly a mood she would recognize now, it had been too long since it had even occurred to her to so much as care about happiness. She like the think there would be roses, too, and she played that scenario through and through, again and again, day after uneventful identical day sitting in the brown leather wheelchair in the Holyoke Skilled Nursing Facility hall.
Someday at the end of all this waiting, she liked to think her perpetual fantasies would be proved right. She liked to think that the cafeteria balcony doors would be open and white light would be shining through them, yes, just up there, and the scent of roses and sunshine would waft in, replacing the ever-present odor of urine, disinfectant and baby powder... "What's going on?" the one nurse would say in wonder (the perky one, the blonde one)... Louisa would bring her head up and clutch the arms of the wheelchair, thin wasted arms trembling from the strain of pushing and - her very favorite part - she would stand.
And walk unaided, a little wobbly, but without pain towards the shining doors... Beyond the bright light she got just the barest glimpse of green grass, white clouds on a blue sky... She reached out and clutched the door-frame in a frail, thin hand and glanced over her shoulder at everyone watching, all the lopsided, abandoned, old dribblers in the hall... And (she always grinned when she thought of this part) out she would step onto the balcony into all the white light and happiness and breeze...
...And would feel gentle fingers questing over her wrist, holding for a few moments and then dropping hopelessly away again... "Sometimes during the night," someone would say...
And the nice nurse, the blonde one, would sigh and brush a few tears away, glance out at the darkened hall... at rows and rows of doors and rooms... all those abandoned people... and all of them waiting. Majestic and waiting.
)
I like the car simile though.
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