Today is my sister Linda's birthday. She's eighteen months older than I, and she has Lewy body dementia. She lives in
a facility in Georgia called the Golden Living Center.
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| Linda, behind me, in the North Carolina woods, 2009, the year before the onset of the disease |
I'll send her a card, as I do twice a week, anyway, a
handmade card, on which I write a few lines – "Happy birthday," in
this case, useless a wish though it is. I depend on her husband or another
visitor to read it to her.
I don't know how much of what I say registers with
her. The idea is just to say, again and again, "You are not forgotten. I
love you. I think about you. I am so, so sorry for what has happened to you."
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| Linda (center) with siblings in 2012, two years after the onset of the disease |
I put the card in an envelope and address it to her at the Golden Living Center.
I choke every time I write those
words. They are so outrageously inappropriate they're not even ironic. Golden
living, indeed. There is nothing
golden about Linda's life in that place. Her speech is garbled into nonsense. She
is wheelchair bound, strapped in, even, because if she should try to stand (and
who can blame her?), she is likely to fall, and a fall is so likely, I can't
want her freed of that restraint, either. I cringe to think of her at the whim of some attendant or some visitor just to move from a bed to a
wheelchair, from a spot in front of the television to a different spot by the
window, though there is no view to look at. Then to sit
there for hours, unable to talk or read or make her wants known.
She spends hours in bed, hallucinating, sleeping, existing. None of those are
golden hours.
Nor is there any silver lining to
the cloud hanging over her mind, unless being cared for in the most basic way –
food, shelter, bathing – is enough to be thankful for. At least there is no
abuse in this facility. At least the residents are kept clean and given
adequate food. Is that the silver lining? Is that the best we can hope for at
the Golden Living Center? What about a friendly touch? Someone to check in and
say, "How are you?" Someone to bring her a glass of water, give
her a massage, read my cards to her? That's a lot to
ask for in a place like that, with over-worked attendants and demented
patients.
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| Linda, seated, with sisters, in the first facility she lived in, before the disease worsened (2014) |
How dare we call a place like that a
"golden living center"? It doesn't even have flowers and bird cages, as at the first facility, along the back wall of the sunny porch, pictured above. There is hardly any space outdoors to wheel her around when we come to visit. I assume the healthy and well compensated
people who named the place were thinking of the golden years of life, those
years after retirement, before old age takes its toll. My sister falls within
that time range, but there is nothing golden about these years for her. They
are gray. They are the clouds without the silver linings, the dimness of
daylight without golden sunshine, the fog of monotony, dreariness, and an empty
mind. They are as dross.
When I was a child there was a
facility like this one, called the old folks' home. That's pretty bad,
too, as though when one becomes old, that's what becomes of one. I visited the
place with a Girl Scout troop once. An old woman in an upstairs room cried out
in her delusions. Old men dozed in their wheelchairs on the porch. Would it be better
to say they were at the Golden Living Center?
I am sorry my sister is there. I am
sorry her golden years have tarnished. I wish this disease had not chosen her.
I wish there were some way to bring happiness into the grayness of her existence.
I wish I didn't have to write "Golden Living Center" on the envelope
when I write to her.
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| Linda at the "Golden Living" Center, with our brother and sister, 2016. Maybe to visit her and wheel her in the sunshine to a small concrete patio does bring her a moment of happiness. |
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