Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Everyone says New Jersey smells like shit. They're mostly right.
Medford smells like highways and piney woods.
i spent two days with a 96 year old grandmother who can't remember what her husband's face looked like. she told fantastic stories about people i'd never heard of. we took walks around the nursing wing and watched the chipmunks burrow into the immacuately-manicured lawns.
life slowed to the pace of an arthritic shuffle.
indoors
seconds were viscous, oozing things - like some negative photograph casino. All clocks, nothing to do.
it was hot outside and freezing inside.
the food was acutally good. My clothes began to smell of carpet cleaner and plastic.
a random old lady made fun of my cargo pants. She asked me if they were what all the kids were wearing these days; if they were "the rage". i pulled a deer-in-headlights and just smiled.
I'm standing in the middle of a hospital wing hallway, my father not far behind, pushing the wheelchair of a brittle, deaf, and mostly-blind 60 pound woman, and some lady laughs at my pants.
look around. The young ones (the sixty year olds) prance around in their subdivision split-level condo-houses, half a mile up the winding roads at the edge of the facilitiy. Early widows, Pension retirees. Get in early for a good spot. They organize tea socials, card games, and field trips for birdwatchers. they petition the management for new gardens and longer hours for the community rooms.
AFter a while, they are pushed quietly inward to the warren of apartments connected at every angle to the complex's central nervous system by covered walkways and emergency tunnels. Each room has a mysterious blue light above the door that looks like a police siren. Bless this mess, psalm 24, the american flag, and so on...
Everyone likes frog statuettes and banzai trees.
Some years later... they'll say "down the road"... they end up in the belly of the beast, stacked along padded corridors with handrails and nurses stations, their belongings condensed into sentimental artifcats of furniture, seldom used appliances, and a television that is always on.
Look around. There's nothing new about being surrounded by people who are dying.
I watched her put the effort of 1000 lifetimes into moving her body from the wheelchair to the bed. She feels numbly along the walls for support and firmly ignores any assisting hands or gestures. This is something she can still do.
Her head is no longer on top of her neck, but it has sunk down and forward, into her body so that her back is a bent and gnarled thing. on her calendar is written a reminder in wobbly magic marker - wash glass eye.
her hands are still alive. they are her vitality.
when she speaks, she squeezes your hands tight and earnestly, and she sees you without ever actually being able to raise her head to look in your direction.
we manage to wrestle her into the car and take her to her favorite diner in town. We argue them into staying open a few extra minutes, and she nodds to herself, her chin barely above the table's edge as she mashes crabackes with her plastic fork.
she is tired, and the phrase "they're dead now" slips into awkward pauses to end the stories she so abruptly begins.
She tells us it is beatiful there, and that she is lucky. We all sit on a veranda for breakfast and watch the birds in the eaves as an industrial lawnmower circles the patio in ever-loudening rings of noise, gas fumes, and grass-clippings.
we leave her and she tells us to come see her when the new garden is completed, so that we can watch her chipmunks eat granola from her back window.
back to the ward, and to the car.
Every tennant over 90 besides her has been moved the one final time, to the hospital wing. We actually pass the windows of the wing as we follow the winding roads out.
i watch the shapes in the beds beyond the glass watching us leave, a little red car winding through the sunlit green and out of view.
we argue politics on the way home, leave I-95 for a back road up the susquehanna river, and barely beat a rainstorm home to my apartment.
Dad has a red-eye out of washingtown tommorow.
i fall asleep late to nightmares and the smell of carpet cleaner.
Medford smells like highways and piney woods.
i spent two days with a 96 year old grandmother who can't remember what her husband's face looked like. she told fantastic stories about people i'd never heard of. we took walks around the nursing wing and watched the chipmunks burrow into the immacuately-manicured lawns.
life slowed to the pace of an arthritic shuffle.
indoors
seconds were viscous, oozing things - like some negative photograph casino. All clocks, nothing to do.
it was hot outside and freezing inside.
the food was acutally good. My clothes began to smell of carpet cleaner and plastic.
a random old lady made fun of my cargo pants. She asked me if they were what all the kids were wearing these days; if they were "the rage". i pulled a deer-in-headlights and just smiled.
I'm standing in the middle of a hospital wing hallway, my father not far behind, pushing the wheelchair of a brittle, deaf, and mostly-blind 60 pound woman, and some lady laughs at my pants.
look around. The young ones (the sixty year olds) prance around in their subdivision split-level condo-houses, half a mile up the winding roads at the edge of the facilitiy. Early widows, Pension retirees. Get in early for a good spot. They organize tea socials, card games, and field trips for birdwatchers. they petition the management for new gardens and longer hours for the community rooms.
AFter a while, they are pushed quietly inward to the warren of apartments connected at every angle to the complex's central nervous system by covered walkways and emergency tunnels. Each room has a mysterious blue light above the door that looks like a police siren. Bless this mess, psalm 24, the american flag, and so on...
Everyone likes frog statuettes and banzai trees.
Some years later... they'll say "down the road"... they end up in the belly of the beast, stacked along padded corridors with handrails and nurses stations, their belongings condensed into sentimental artifcats of furniture, seldom used appliances, and a television that is always on.
Look around. There's nothing new about being surrounded by people who are dying.
I watched her put the effort of 1000 lifetimes into moving her body from the wheelchair to the bed. She feels numbly along the walls for support and firmly ignores any assisting hands or gestures. This is something she can still do.
Her head is no longer on top of her neck, but it has sunk down and forward, into her body so that her back is a bent and gnarled thing. on her calendar is written a reminder in wobbly magic marker - wash glass eye.
her hands are still alive. they are her vitality.
when she speaks, she squeezes your hands tight and earnestly, and she sees you without ever actually being able to raise her head to look in your direction.
we manage to wrestle her into the car and take her to her favorite diner in town. We argue them into staying open a few extra minutes, and she nodds to herself, her chin barely above the table's edge as she mashes crabackes with her plastic fork.
she is tired, and the phrase "they're dead now" slips into awkward pauses to end the stories she so abruptly begins.
She tells us it is beatiful there, and that she is lucky. We all sit on a veranda for breakfast and watch the birds in the eaves as an industrial lawnmower circles the patio in ever-loudening rings of noise, gas fumes, and grass-clippings.
we leave her and she tells us to come see her when the new garden is completed, so that we can watch her chipmunks eat granola from her back window.
back to the ward, and to the car.
Every tennant over 90 besides her has been moved the one final time, to the hospital wing. We actually pass the windows of the wing as we follow the winding roads out.
i watch the shapes in the beds beyond the glass watching us leave, a little red car winding through the sunlit green and out of view.
we argue politics on the way home, leave I-95 for a back road up the susquehanna river, and barely beat a rainstorm home to my apartment.
Dad has a red-eye out of washingtown tommorow.
i fall asleep late to nightmares and the smell of carpet cleaner.
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