There Are No Cheerful Hearts in the Nursing Home

Several people have been nice to ask why The Cheerful Heart suddenly shut down production. There are three reasons, which we'll tackle one at a time.

Shortly after my last entry, my mother, who lives in West Virginia, (I'm in Maryland) woke up unable to walk or even get out of bed. She, Irene, is 92 years old and lives on her own in her own apartment in Parkersburg, WV. She takes care of herself, reads many books, plays bridge two or three times a week, watches game shows on television and makes meals from the food I bring to her to warm up in the microwave. Or I say she did, for she is no longer able to do so.

She went to the emergency room where she was diagnosed as having a heart problem. Please. A ninety-two year old lady shows up with paralysis on her right side, difficulty in walking, difficulty using her right hand and right foot and the emergency room physician sends her home with heart medecine? It's a stroke, you dimwit! By now my sister was with her, she spent the night and in the morning what was obviously a small stroke had become a large stroke and she was doomed. The next trip to the emergency room turned up the evidence with a CAT scan. Stroke. Pretty much total paralysis on the right side, at least as far as her arm and leg are concerned. She was then taken to Charleston, West Virginia where my sister lives, to the hospital, cared for and eventually moved to the nicest nursing home in the city, where she is today.

She is in hell. And there's almost nothing anyone can do about it. And so are her children: my sister, myself and my brother. In our own particular kind of hell.

Welcome to the Cheerful Heart.

The point here, in this blog, is not to detail the pain and suffering of the inhabitants, and the staff at the Oak Ridge Nursing home. (Though I think I will probably do so; it is a situation that begs to be written about). My mother is not the first nor will she be the last to endure these sufferings. I have long thought that everyone in the U.S. above the age of 12 should be taken to a nursing home and forced to spend the day, observing the poor poor people who are there, in their wheelchairs, clutching their baby dolls, chanting their pleas for help, trying to eat, trying to get better, trying to go home, most with no homes to go to, trying, trying to scrape together some semblance of a life, or death. And being unable to put together either. It is so sad.

So where is the Cheerful Heart? Since Grandma fell ill, I have visited a number of times, taking my children and my niece to see her. They all love her and it has cheered my heart to watch them with her. They are unfailingly kind to her, unafraid to sit and talk and do what she needs done without flinching or backing away. They were brought up well, a credit to my wife and myself, my sister and her husband, my brother and his wife. Or perhaps all children are good if we can only let them be so. At any rate, they love their grandma and they show it. Others who roll along in the hallway of then home in their wheelchairs are not so fortunate. There are 78, one wants to call them inmates, but that is too harsh. The staff tells me that half of them get no visitors at all. Ever. Most of them are terribly wounded from their physical afflictions. Many of them have been driven mad by their... incarceration. There I go again.

So what can I do? I pushed my mother in her chair into the sun last week, in the morning. Should I drop you a line? she asked. Yes, I answered. Will you write me back, she asked. Yes, of course. Do you know where I live? Yes, I know where you live.

Where do I live, she asked. Where do I live?