The Last Home

 This is the last stop in life.  A place where people go to die.  People that have hung onto life with tenacity, refusing to succumb to common disease or sudden departure by heart attack, stroke, liver failure, kidney failure or some other organ failure.  Their bodies withering away but their insides still ticking, ticking.  A final gruesome price for clean living: a slow, decaying end.

The Cabrini Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Center is a home for the aged.  It is one of the best facilities of its kind in the city and yet is chilling in its reality. Inside this building on 5^th Street in the Lower East Side of New York City are the remnants of once proud lives, lives that are now essentially over.  Lives that were good enough, full enough, or even hard enough that death treads cautiously when approaching them.  Here are those that rage against the light.

Come, let me take you inside and introduce you to some of the finest people in the city.  These are the people that built this city into what it is today, built the world to the status it now enjoys.  They are some of the ones whose fruits of labor we enjoy.  They are builders, designers, researchers; blue collar and white collar and their legacy we casually call our ‘standard of living.’  They are also the people that don’t have the decency enough to lay down and die and make room for the young, people that don’t know how to call it quits, their great strengths of character now a revenge against the peace of rest, they that won’t go into that dark night.

  They are the residents of this, a last home.

Come with me now but note: these names are not their real names.   I have changed them out of respect.  This is not how they would want to be remembered.  No, they would want to be remembered for their accomplishments, for the families they raised, for the adversities they endured.  These would fill a book, indeed, a library.  That is their story to tell.  This is mine.

The front door is double locked.  A security guard will buzz us in.  The double lock is for the protection of the residents, lest they should stray out into the street and hurt themselves.  In its own way it is not unlike a prison.

You must sign in, on the pink pages, for volunteers.  They don’t let just anybody in, but do not worry you’re with me.  They know me here.  I come once in a while to visit some of the friends I’ve made.  Some of the people here are lonely.  They have no family left alive to visit them, no one who cares for them but the staff at Cabrini and the nuns here.  People that have so much kindness in them that they have devoted their whole lives to doing work such as this.

You’ll get used to the smell.  It’s not too bad really - most of the time, at least.  It’s perspiration, must, urine, and feces, disinfectant, and food.  The halls are clean, and somewhat quiet save for the sound of televisions playing in the rooms.  You won’t see many nurses or attendants.  They are always busy taking care of the residents.

There are a few residents in wheelchairs in the hallway.  Notice how they sit in the chair, crooked, slouched, pushing along at a rate of about three feet per minute.  It takes strength to push the wheels of a wheelchair, strength you and I take for granted.  There is one woman who is using a walker, a kind of metal frame that will support her weight and has wheels on it to assist her as she moves about.  Her steps are only six inches and she seems to be going off on an angle.  Eventually she veers into a wall.  She had an uneven hold on the walker and it did not lead her in a straight line.  She just stands there, not strong enough to turn it back straight, unable to walk away on her own.  Excuse me a second while I help her.

Did you see the emptiness in her wide eyes; how her jaw hangs open, off to one side?  My guess is she is the victim of a stroke.  That empty look only looks empty.  Take a second and look closer.  There, you see it?  Wide-eyed desperation.  The look of someone trapped, trying to communicate with the intensity of vision alone; like a prisoner from death row taking his seat in old sparky and turning to look at the viewers, no words, only the potency of those windows of the soul.  What must it be like to be trapped inside a body with which you can’t communicate to the outside world with?  No voice to speak, no hands or arms to gesture with, no facial expressions, frowns, laughter, only tears that roll down stoic cheeks.  Life trapped in an uncooperative vessel. 

It will probably take her an hour or more to get where she is going but the nurse’s let her go on her own.  It is good exercise for her and a kind of rehabilitation for her to gain back more control over her legs and arms.  Don’t worry about her, she’ll get where she’s going.

Let me introduce you to Richard.  He is a big man, maybe six-five.  It’s hard to tell because I’ve never seen him standing.  He can’t stand.  He had his feet amputated because of diabetes.  That’s what originally brought him here, as is the same for quite a few of these people.  They took care of themselves until the diabetes caused ulcers on their lower extremities.  Those ulcers just wouldn’t heal, became infected eventually and the only thing our great doctors with their billions and billions of annual dollars for research and their super hi-tech labs and their super computers and their bio-engineering and their - enough!  All they could do for them is amputate.

How does someone in there seventies or eighties learn to adjust after losing a foot, a leg, or both? 

They don’t.  They have to come to places like Cabrini -if they’re lucky.  And they come hanging on to the notion that they are only here for a short while, till they get better.  Then they will go back to their homes and get back to the business of living.  To accept anything less is admitting defeat, accepting death.  Rage, rage against the light.

Richard was a builder.  He ran a moderate sized construction company.  Some of the people he says he worked for or with makes you wonder if he doesn’t have some form of senility, too.  He doesn’t.  I’ve seen it validated by overheard conversations with doctors and other visitors.  Here is a man that once told Leona Helmsly to “get out of the way and let the men do their work.”   This to the “queen of mean” herself.  Here is one of the many men that built this great world-class city, brick by brick, from blueprint to mortar to cutting the ribbon; the city that we live in and enjoy without thought of what it took to build it.  Richard will tell you what it took.  He’ll tell you of having to deal with mob-run labor unions in the fifties, of graft greedy zoning boards, of wealthy developers influencing banks to stall on construction loans causing projects to be closed for lack of payroll.  Through all this he struggled and fought and even somehow managed to prosper. 

Richard now wears diapers because he can’t make it to the bathroom when the call sets in.    He must depend on some aide to change it for him or he will have to lie in his own mess until one is available to help him.  Here is a big man that once bossed construction crews, hardhats as they are called, now dependant strangers to change him and clean his most private self. 

Richard talks of getting a computer and putting in bids for jobs from his bed.  He smiles a lot and hopes to be back to work as soon as he gets his prosthetic.  That is the tenacity by which he lived, the determination that wouldn’t quit as he now refuses to with life.  He’s sleeping now so let’s not disturb him.

There is a very special woman I’d like you to meet.  Estelle.  She’s tiny, not more than four feet five inches, and she’s very sharp so watch what you say around her.  If she thinks you’re pitying her she let you have it with both barrels.  She’ll be in her room, she never leaves it.

“Hello there, Estelle,”

“Hello there, yourself,” her big blue eyes light up.  “Come to do your good deed?”  she’s says.   She’s referring to me being a volunteer here.  Kind of rubs my face in it.

“No, I just come to see my favorite girl.”

“Girl?  Some girl.  If I’m the best you can do you better see one of these no-good doctors they got around here.”

Estelle is sitting in a high-backed winged chair.  She’s reading a novel.  Reading is her favorite past time. 

“What are you reading?”

“Clancy.”

“Any good?”

“The guy’s a jerk.  Thinks he knows all about the CIA, and the military,”

“He doesn’t?”

“How would I know?  I don’t know nothing about them, but at least I know I don’t know nothing.”  Her voice is cocky, pure New Yorker.  Born and raised here, lived here all her life. 

Estelle was once a very beautiful woman.  Her’s was a beauty that must have hung on well into her middle years.  She’s very self-conscious even now about her looks, which is why she won’t leave her room.  She knows her appearance reflects her age and she refuses to be seen in public looking anything less than that of a desirable woman. She won’t go visit anyone else here but loves it when someone comes to visit her.  She loves chocolates and flowers and will talk all day if she has the opportunity.  Her favorite books are romance novels.  She’s 86.           Her’s is a different kind of pain and she faces it regularly - on her own terms.  She’s just waiting to “get it over with.”

I’ve looked at her once when she had fallen asleep in her chair.  A frail woman with a back hunched from age, sagging, wrinkled skin that is almost translucent, and thin gray-white hair.  I’ve tried to imagine what she must have looked like.  For all her lost vanity she keeps no photos of her younger self, never talks about her great conquests of the heart, yet the evidence is all around her; in the pictures of her one time friends and lovers.  Those pictures she does keep, but none of herself.  I see her as she might have been, dignified, a debutant, with suitors calling upon her attentions, and her demure smile teasing them and fending them off at the same time. A torrid history of hearts aflame and joyfully broken.

Next to that envisioned flower I see the haggard old lady she is today.  The beauty withered, betrayed by time, corrupted by the clock.   And I am aware that behind those sparkly blue eyes is the same spirit, the same mind that once radiated desire and sent men to their knees.  What must she think and feel when she looks in the mirror.  To see youth and vitality all around you?  What is it like to not even have the strength to walk more than a few feet at a time, to hurt in every joint and bone?  To know death is most certainly coming at any minute?  To not have anything left to hope for but to “get it over with?”

I have left here many a night thinking of my own future and what it might hold.  I work out regularly and take good care of my body, watch what I eat, make sure I get all the proper nutrition.  I see doctors and get regular check ups, but no matter what I do, I too, as will you, succumb to the scourge of time. 

Is this to be my future?  Are all my efforts for health a two-sided sword that will slice my self-image into  reflections of what I once was?  What is this enemy of self we call life?. 

We live each day barely acknowledging what time might hold for us, do to us, and we move through the turn of the little hand with a deliberate ignorance of what is to be.  And it is to be, if we’re lucky.  Or maybe the real luck is in the sudden heart attack brought on by decadent living, excessive cholesterol, and stress.  Better to burn out than fade away?

On the surface this might  sound like the retirement of luxury: rest and relaxation, the leisurely life of the elderly, attendants to tend to your every need, social gatherings in the community room, all your meals cooked for you, laundry and other chores performed by a staff of courteous aides.  The golden years.

The golden years!

Come, I have another friend I’d like you to meet.

Julius is on the fifth floor.  Each floor has its own class of resident gauged on how well they can take care of them selves.  The fifth floor is a relatively good floor.  This means Julius can usually make it to the bathroom on his own.  Usually.  An odd way to rate someone.  He can even walk a little bit.    A little bit being a few feet or so, but he can do it all on his own, no walker.

“Good afternoon. Julius.”

“Eh…eh …What are you going to do, what are you going to do…” 

He sits in a wheel chair.  He doesn’t walk much, but he can and that’s an all important difference.  He’s staring at the wall.  “Eh … what are you going to do …”

“Hello Julius.”  I say again, a little louder this time.  He doesn’t hear well.

“Eh … oh, hello Eddie.”  No, I didn’t also change my name in this.  He calls me Eddie, Kenny and a couple of other names.

“My name is Thomas.  How are you doing today?”

“Thomas?  You’re my cousin?”

“No, I’m not a cousin.  I’m just a friend come to see how you’re doing.   So, how are you doing?”

“Cousin?  Eddie?  What side of the family?”

“You doing okay?”  I avoid the issue.

“Okay?  Eh … what are you going to do, what are you going to do.”

He turns back and stares at the wall, seeing something only he understands, something deep beyond the three dimensions of that pale blue wall, something that probably existed three quarters of a century ago.  “Eh … what are you going to do.”

I reach out and put a compassionate hand on his shoulder, the only means of communication left.  He nods, “eh … what are you going to do, what are you going to do.”

Ah, I see it is too harsh a place to visit for you.  It is difficult for me too, and I feel the urge to turn and run each time I come here.   I want to run from the truths that are hidden here and deny they can ever be.  I want to turn away and never see a place like this ever again,  to forget I ever knew about it in the first place.  I wish to be innocent of life.

  In honesty, what is most painful is the possibility that this is to be my future.   A body that has no strength, limbs that decay into painful infection until they must  be removed as that decay spreads, an appearance that is revolting even to myself, and a mind that is lost in the fugue of partial memories and synaptic short circuits.  That I will have nothing left to live for except  to wait, and wait, and wait, to get it over with.

When I look into those empty eyes of a stroke victim,  I don’t just see eyes crying out with intensity of a trapped soul in a living prison;  I see myself.

A life lived into lonely obscurity is surely the greatest pain of all.

Eh, what are you going to do, what are you going to do.

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