Giving Thanks

I’ve just come back home after spending a few hours at a nursing home as part of the Holiday Project (www.holidayproject.org).  According to the team lead, 60% of people in nursing home never get visitors, even over the holidays.  So, the Holiday Project lines up volunteers to visit people in nursing homes during Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentines’ Day, etc.  The last time I did a Holiday Project visit over Thanksgiving was in 2003 or something so it’s been awhile.  I was especially apprehensive because the last time I saw my Dad before he died was Thanksgiving in 2007, and even now I get weepy when I think about it.  I didn’t know how I’d handle seeing sweet old men all by themselves.   Can’t say I finish a Holiday Project feeling joyous, but it’s something I want to do.

Two people I visited stayed with me.  The first one was my very first visit - a 24-year-old girl.   She looked like she had cerebral palsy and she was very difficult to hear, like she had a learning disability.  She would point at something green and say it was purple, then say it was green, so I couldn’t tell if she was teasing or not.  One of the nursing staff was with her.  I only stayed a few minutes because it was so difficult to speak with her.  As I turned to leave I saw a huge poster on the wall facing her.  It was covered with pictures of a beautiful girl – class pictures, college graduation pictures, pictures with friends.  The girl, whoever she was, was as pretty as a TV actor.  And it was the girl in the nursing home bed.  I have no idea what happened to her, but it must have happened in the last two years if her college graduation picture was on the poster.  I wanted to ask the nurse but it was really none of my business.  I wondered if she was hit by a drunk driver, or if she was drinking and driving, or what.   What I really wanted to do was to have my 19-year-old niece visit her, along with every college freshman in the world.

Then I visited another woman for well over an hour.  She was large and bedridden and quite articulate, and spent 35 years in a high-level government job.   She was divorced with two sons, both of whom lived locally.  Neither one had planned to visit her.  She told me how she had tolerated one son’s marriage to a “lower class” woman, and although she said she never voiced her disapproval, I suspect that had a whole lot to do with why her sons didn’t visit with her.  I stayed with her because first, she was easy to talk with, and second, because I was pretty sure that no family would visit with her today.  She was kind of bossy to the nurses and I’ll be she is difficult to deal with.  Right around noon one of her sons called her, and she was so surprised and happy to hear from him.

And now I am back home, putting the final touches on our own Thanksgiving for 16.  What a contrast to this morning – a reminder once again to take nothing for granted and family is everything.  How lucky I am.

Get out and give back.