“We have a nursing home run by very kind people. People who are overworked and underpaid. They do the best they can and they do it because they genuinely like their jobs. Or because for them it’s not a job, it’s a calling. But there’s always a good deal of work and they can’t seem to keep some of their staff or volunteers. Probably because they can’t pay much and volunteers find the work difficult, sometimes tedious, at times heart wrenching, but all the time constant. They called a few days ago, saying that a volunteer had quit in order to go back to college and another one simply stopped showing. They asked us to keep a look out. I’m going to help until they find some people to do so and do it regularly. But if you have time and don’t mind hard work, they could use your help.”
I had time but I didn’t know if I minded hard work. I’d never had to do any. Growing up, we had actual live-in maids and cooks and the like. The rest of my life, I’d had services take care of everything.
There were times when Conrad and I would move, before I found cleaning services, that I did the cleaning, and right then, new to Magdalene, I’d been doing it at Cliff Blue and I liked it. I didn’t want to do it for eight hour days, five days a week, but it wasn’t terrible. And it felt nice to accomplish something.
No, it felt nice just to do something. Something needed. Something real.
And I’d never thought of senior citizens but I didn’t have an aversion to them. All my grandparents had loved me, so had Conrad’s. They’d really, really loved me. In fact, anytime we were together, I’d always end up sitting with them or off somewhere with them, talking, sharing, joking, laughing. I liked my grandparents and Conrad’s a whole lot better than my own parents (and, incidentally, Conrad’s) and I’d been devastated as, one by one, we’d lost them all.
Maybe that was something else I had a talent with.
Still, I said to the pastor’s wife, “To be honest, I would need to discuss what was needed of me but I can clean. I can cook. I can talk. I can tidy. I can organize. I can look after people. And I like doing all of that. So I’d like the opportunity to discuss it.”
Her eyes slightly narrowed, not in an unkind way, but in a speculative one when she said, “I wouldn’t like to introduce these people to a volunteer who isn’t interested in helping out how they need it, and just as importantly, for the long haul.”
“I would agree,” I replied. “That’s why I think I should know what I’m getting into so I can know if I can give them what they need. However, I do want to find something I enjoy doing, something that’s useful, and do it for the long haul.”
I drew in breath as I bought time to say the words I needed to say without lying in a house of God.
Then I said, “My children are older. They don’t need me as much anymore and my husband and I are divorced so I actually don’t have them all the time. I’ve never worked, but with an empty house, I need something to fill my life. I think I might like it filled with some elderly who are doing me a return favor by keeping me company.”
She studied me a moment before she said softly, “I like that you think of it that way.”
“I’m glad,” I replied then introduced myself. “I’m Amelia Hathaway.”
She lifted her hand and started to me, with me meeting her halfway. “Ruth Fletcher.”
We clasped hands and her hold was firm and warm. “Lovely meeting you, Ruth.”
“And you, Amelia,” she replied.
We let go and she motioned to the desk. “How about you give me your telephone number? I’ll call Dove House and we’ll set up a meeting with Dela Coleman.”
“Excellent,” I agreed, moving with her to the desk.
I left my number, we said warm good-byes and I went back out to my car.
I didn’t dally in front of the church wondering if I’d done the right thing.
I drove away, thinking volunteering at a nursing home could mean anything, and a variety of those things could be unpleasant.
But I wouldn’t want to volunteer and demand that I got to read stories or oversee craft time.
I’d want to volunteer and do what was needed.
Which could mean cleaning up a number of messes, changing sheets, doing laundry, who knew?
And as I drove home, something strange stole over me. Something strange and new and unbelievable.
Because my mind was filled with all of the things that could be required of a down and dirty volunteer at a nursing home, and all I could think was that I hoped like heck they liked me.
Because I couldn’t wait to start.
* * * * *
“Praise be to Jesus!” the woman behind the desk at Dove House called to the ceiling, her hands lifted up there, her plethora of black braids shaking. She dropped her hands and her eyes hit Ruth, sitting across the desk in a chair beside me. “Call up the good Reverend”, she jerked her head my way, “and God sends a miracle.”
Ruth beamed.
“I’m hardly a miracle,” I mumbled.
“’Scuse me?’ Dela Coleman, Director of Dove House Retirement Home, asked me. “Did you just say you didn’t mind bed pans, changin’ sheets, lookin’ after dentures, wipin’ up half-chewed food, vacuuming, dusting? Not to mention folk who call you other people’s names and swear up and down for hours that you’re their own child or the girl who stole their boyfriend back in the day and they might come tearin’ at you, fingernails bared?”
“I did say that I didn’t mind that,” I confirmed.
“And did you say you could give me three days a week for three hours a day and I don’t have to lay cash on your behind?” she went on.
“I said that as well,” I told her.
“Then if you actually show up those three days a week for three hours a day and work and don’t take off and become a no show or tell me you’re,” she lifted her hands and did air quotation marks, “goin’ back to college at age fifty-six, then you…are…a…miracle.”
“People do go back to college at any age,” Ruth put in and Dela turned her eyes to her.
“Ruth, honey, I saw the woman at The Shack eatin’ omelets and suckin’ back coffees with her biddies and she did not have a laptop in front of her, workin’ on coursework for her online classes to become a graphic designer,” she stated bluntly. “Now, I got old folk attemptin’ the great escape every day, and they may be old but they are not stupid. So it’s touch and go we shut them down or we gotta go to Wayfarer’s to stop them shufflin’ down the aisles in their slippers. Loretta is not gonna be a graphic designer. Loretta was tired of cleaning up half-chewed food and havin’ Mrs. McMurphy shout at her every time she saw her to keep her hands off her man.”