08-16-2016, 10:52 PM
Thanks Quix. I visited my mother three or four times a week for 5 years, from the time her dementia meant she needed 24/7 care, until her death three years ago.
I got to know the other patients, always about 40 of them, in the Nursing Home's hospital ward, and their regular family visitors. We all mostly visited at lunchtime (so the carers had help with feeding them the main meal of the day). Every single patient was a story of tragedy but some were ironic as well - like German Joe and Russian Joe whose wheelchairs were put side by side every day.
They'd both been in the army during WWII and had both been involved in the first siege of Kiev in 1941, on opposite sides. Their families worked it out, chatting at Christmas lunch. We all wondered if they could have shot at each other.
I try to write about what I saw, and felt, and was part of. I told my mother when her husband of 35 years, my step-father, died. She had no idea who I was talking about.
I got to know the other patients, always about 40 of them, in the Nursing Home's hospital ward, and their regular family visitors. We all mostly visited at lunchtime (so the carers had help with feeding them the main meal of the day). Every single patient was a story of tragedy but some were ironic as well - like German Joe and Russian Joe whose wheelchairs were put side by side every day.
They'd both been in the army during WWII and had both been involved in the first siege of Kiev in 1941, on opposite sides. Their families worked it out, chatting at Christmas lunch. We all wondered if they could have shot at each other.
I try to write about what I saw, and felt, and was part of. I told my mother when her husband of 35 years, my step-father, died. She had no idea who I was talking about.