Mortality

 Now that I work with the elderly thoughts of my own mortality frequently enter my mind. When I first started working at the nursing home I wasn't sure I could handle watching people suffer on a daily basis at the end of their lives. Of course not all of them are suffering, most of them make the best of their situation that life has dealt to them, others have no control over the diseases that have riddled their minds and bodies. They depend on others to make life as comfortable as possible. In some of those cases they will live out the rest of their lives in a nursing home. When I enter a residents room I always wear a smile. I really do like my job. What better way to make a living than to serve others? Some of the residents have old pictures of themselves from their younger years hanging on their walls, and are often eager to share a story or two. Stories about serving in a war, coming to America for the first time from abroad, or reminiscing about a spouse that has since passed. Some of them have no family, and others have family that visit often. You get to know all of them as well. I wish I had more time to spend with each one of them, but of course there is work to be done.

When a resident passes it's always heartbreaking, but at the same time it can make you feel at peace because I know that most of them were ready to rest their weary bodies. You can usually tell when someone is ready to let go. It's something you see and just feel after working here for awhile. Of course there are some exceptions. I just recently had an Aunt pass away, and I never saw it coming. She wasn't in a nursing home, and she cared for herself. Over 25 years ago she started to have bad headaches, and they discovered she had several small aneurysms in her brain. She had a total of 3 brain surgeries to remove the ones they thought would kill her, but she had more they would find that they would have to leave. It was just too dangerous for her to have anymore surgeries. I was in my early 20s and she was in her early 40s. After opening up someones head 3 times there is gonna be some damage. She was not the same person who helped to raise me in my teens. She had to be taught the simplest tasks all over again. They told us she would never recover to a functioning adult, and would probably not live but a few more years. Well, they were wrong. Almost 30 years later she was still with us and functioning on her own. When I was told of her passing, one of the first things that went through my mind was a poem I had recently read by Edgar Allen Poe...

                                                         
                                                        Rest in peace my sweet, Azeal

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