Tales From Exit 22 by Al Batt

Call it what you want, it’s a place I visit regularly.

It’s a nursing home, care center or rest home.

It’s a wonderful place where no one ever wants to live.

It’s where living quarters are diminished in size and filled with nightlights. Where everything becomes inconvenient. People become envelopes without stamps. In a noisy world, lives are quieted.

I go there often because there are people there that I care about. I also go to curry favor with my conscience. Over the years, and I’ve had more than a few, my visits have increased.

On any scale of importance, it’s important that I pay frequent calls. The residents teach me. I learn by revelations and shared recollections.

On a recent visit, I spoke with a fellow who had milked Holsteins when the only bags appropriate for milk transportation were the udders of cows. His superpower had been being able to take care of himself. Now he couldn’t do that. He told delightful tales of his grandmother who had raised him. When I inquired about his grandfather, he growled that the only thing he ever got from his grandfather was his middle name. He added that he had to hand it to the old goat. If he didn’t, his granddaddy reached out and took it. Some thought the man full of that which makes grass grow, but I considered him cooler than Fonzie on Fonzie’s best day and a warehouse of stories.

I listened to his stories. It’s important that someone listens. Each time I see an obituary in the newspaper, I realize that a library had burned. The stories are gone.

I visited a portion of the home that is dedicated to residents who are afflicted with dementia. Alzheimer’s is a word that causes one to give pause in consideration of the plight of another and in gratitude for his own clear mind. We are happy to be well.

We all have experienced the inability to remember things. We forget. I learn something new each day. It’s often something that I’d forgotten.

As I jumped into the air to catch a pass in a football game, displaying a leaping ability that made turtles envious, a tackler hit me low. This caused me to topple over backwards, landing helmet first on the field. What goes up must come down with a thud. I don’t remember any of that. My bell had been rung. What I do remember was the doctor asking if I knew what day it was. I replied that it was today.

The MD held up three fingers and continued his interrogation, “How many fingers do you see?”

I responded with a confident, “Orange.”

My coach heard this and said, “Walk it off and then get back on the field.”

I had a brain concussion. No one had suspected that I had a brain.

Everyone is familiar with the feeling of not knowing things. I took a calculus class once. I sat at the front of the class so that everything taught had an easier path while going over my head.

The people I visit in this section of the building don’t always know me. That’s OK. I know them. As long as we both remain on this planet, I’ll keep them company.

I visited one of my favorite people. I’ll call her Lois. That’s not her real name. It seems right that I give her an alias.

Although her illness had changed her in many ways, her demeanor remained kind and caring. She is one of the nicest people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. I enjoyed visiting with her. She asked if I’d stop and talk to her husband. She added that he’d been asking about me. I promised that I would. And I did.

It was a frigid and blustery day, the snow was at the year’s deepest. I wore no hat or gloves because I suffer from a winter smugness that often plagues those who live where the winters can be wearing. Ice, snow, wind and cold made for a perilous walk, but I had no doubt that I’d find her husband at home. I knew right where he was buried.

I talked with him, let’s call him Larry — not his real name, for as long as my chilled ears would allow before I waved goodbye to his gravestone. I enjoyed my visit with Larry. He was a good listener. He always had been.

Who you know is important. I’m glad I‘d known him.

And I kept my promise.

 

Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.