Just For One Day
I used to play this song in the car every day as I drove to visit my mother in the nursing home. It helped.
I would go in her room, and make her smile and sometimes even laugh. I could raise the spirits of everyone in the room with her. I could be a hero, just for one day.
But once I had kissed her on the cheek and stepped through the door into the hall, I guess the facade dropped.
I remember one time after a visit I sat down in the little waiting area at the front entrance, and one of the residents came up to me and asked, “Is everything all right?”
I told her my mother was dying.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, and she sat down on the sofa next to me, a look of genuine concern on her face.
A few minutes later she suddenly looked startled. “Have you seen my dog?” she asked. I realized she had dementia, and I pointed to the nursing station. “That would be the place to ask,” I told her. She scurried off.
But she had lifted my spirits a bit, and that was no small task.
You visited your mom. Beautiful. I worked in the kitchen of a home and so many people were so lonely. They’d get visitors maybe twice a year. XXOO
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I worked as a CNA in the Alzheimer’s ward of a local nursing home until my back wouldn’t let me anymore. I saw the loneliness, too. There were only two days that were crowded, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.
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you are MY hero..every single day
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