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I used to work on a hospital floor adjacent to a nursing home wing down the hall. Sometimes we could hear the loud screeching croak of what sounded like some kind of weird terrible bird coming from one of the rooms. One night the LPN asked if I could help change this patient's sheets--we weren't supposed to intermingle at all, but I said okay.
The LPN gave the patient a sedative to try to quieten her; other nursing home clients were longsuffering and didn't complain much, but after a while the constant screeching croak became almost unbearable, inasmuch as the screeching always occurred at night and pierced the walls, keeping all awake.
The lady, "Ms. Penelope" lay in a hospital bed curled in a fetal position, dry and slender as a stick, with a mighty set of lungs. How she could screech all night without losing her voice I don't know. We changed her urine soaked sheets. I felt such sympathy for anyone whose life would culminate in this. There were no photos of family, no flowers, no personal mementos anywhere.
The LPN said I want to show you something. In the top of a closet was a journal written by Ms. Penelope years before. The cursive handwriting was beautiful, the words eloquent and erudite. The journal was dedicated to a daughter who was deceased. Ms. Penelope wrote to her daughter about how much she missed her, and the daily struggles since her husband "Odysseus" had died.
All of a sudden it clicked-- I had never met Ms. Penelope, but one of her three sons had gone to the same school I had. Penelope and Odysseus had marvelous genes--they had produced three remarkably handsome sons. These boys had silky black hair, fair skin and iridescently bright green eyes. There was something regal and noble about them.
Slim wrists that seemed right to be framed by the brocade and lace of another age, long tapered graceful fingers, delicate features, aristocratic blue bloods, Dukes, Marquis' --they were born for royalty, not the Mississippi backwoods. Ms. Penelope, this terrible bird, was their mother. The sons were grown and had their own lives now, and hardly ever visited her.
One of the beautiful sons just died from Alzheimer's. Surely as the slow sinking into unreality occurred, he must have thought of his mother.
Susil
