Practicing Random Acts of Kindness ... in a Nursing Home

Image by Siggy Nowak from Pixabay

I’ve been spending a lot of time of late in the company of elderly people, and I’ve concluded that we human beings don’t lose our unique capacity for dysfunction as we grow older.

Over the past two and a half years that Mom has been residing in the senior living community, my siblings and I have seen all kinds of crazy stuff—from shouting matches and food fights to an affair amongst married residents (yes, you heard that right).

Amidst all the drama, however, amidst all the distressing scenes of illness and disease and suffering that are everywhere to be seen in a senior home, I have witnessed moments of amazing grace and empathy that have reminded me that the milk of human kindness never stops flowing even when the rest of the body runs dry.

I witnessed another such moment the other day while sitting with Mom and her friends in the dining room at supper. It’s always the same table that Mom chooses to sit at for dinner, and always the same set of two or three friends she wants to sit with. Most of the other residents seem to share these same tribal instincts, making dinnertime at the community a fairly predictable affair.

There is one resident, however, who tends to float from table to table seeking a friendly perch to roost. The woman—let’s call her Alicia—is a bit of an odd duck. She has a habit of dressing in colorful gypsy clothes and crazy-aunt hats, and she has a way of throwing her arms and hands loosely about, likely from a degenerative neurological condition. She also mumbles when she speaks, which makes it hard for the other residents to follow what she’s saying.

I have spoken with Alicia a few times and have found her to be quite friendly and affable. But for the above reasons, she is not popular with the residents and, sadly, often is not invited to sit at others’ tables.

On this particular evening, Alicia was sitting by herself at a table on the other side of the dining room. At one point as Mom picked at her dinner, she glanced in Alicia’s direction.

“Is Alicia crying?” she asked.

I looked over and saw it was so. Alicia’s head was bowed and tears were streaming down her face.

“I wonder what’s the matter with her?” Mom pondered.

Mom’s short-term memory is at a point where she will forget what happened a minute ago. But the situation on the other side of the room clearly had her attention for she kept looking over at the table where an aide was speaking softly to Alicia. After a few minutes, Alicia gathered herself and the aide went away, but soon she was crying again, her shoulders shaking with her sobs.

“She’s really upset,” Mom said. “She’s not eating her dinner.”

Indeed, Alicia—who normally has the appetite of a horse—had not touched the food on her plate. Another aide came by and tried to settle her, but to no avail.

Everyone now was looking in the poor woman’s direction, but other than the aides, no one was making a move to do anything.  

“It’s a shame,” Mom said. “No one wants to sit with her.”

Now, it must be said that my mother is one of the people who tends to look the other way when Alicia is searching for a dinner table to sit at. Whether at this particular moment Mom was aware of this dichotomy between words and action, I don’t know. All I knew was that she seemed to have lost her appetite. She put down her fork and pushed away her plate.

“I’m done,” she announced. “Take me over to Alicia’s table. I want to talk to her.”

I dutifully pushed my wheelchair-bound mother over to the table where Alicia was sitting by herself. I watched as Mom asked Alicia why she was upset.

“Everyone’s talking about me,” Alicia said through her tears.  

“Who's talking about you?” Mom asked.

“Just some people,” Alicia said. “They’re spreading rumors.”

“What kind of rumors?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Alicia said, waving her hand. Then she started crying harder.

Mom’s lips pushed together the way she used to when we were kids and she was giving us advice for whatever life challenge we were dealing with.

“Well, you just need to ignore them,” she said firmly.

“I try to,” Alicia said. “Some days are just harder than others.”

“Yes, some days are harder,” Mom sympathized.

At that, she reached out her hand and set it on Alicia’s arm.

“Don’t you worry about what anyone says. You’re a good person.”

Alicia took heart from this and gave a broken smile.

And that was it. I wheeled Mom back up to her room and the incident was forgotten.

As I walked to my car that evening after the visit, it struck me that throughout our lives, my siblings and I have always endeavored to earn the pride of our parents. But now I was feeling something different.

I was proud of my mother. It was an odd feeling, but a nice one, and I basked in it all the way home.