There’s a hidden world inside each nursing home. Each center is filled with people striving to live their best lives despite age and disability. Family visitors arrive when they can to offer care and companionship. Staff members devote themselves to this work largely because of their genuine fondness for the residents.
If people would like long lives or to have a place nearby to help care for ailing loved ones, then what’s happening inside these homes is important. Each facility is a vital community resource we hope to never need.
This series of anecdotes will take readers beyond the closed doors of the nursing home and into my experiences as a long-term care psychologist. Part of my job is to fall in love with every resident I meet. Perhaps you will too. I’ll begin with a brief tale from 2008.
Love Story #1: The Twilight Years
She sat quietly in her wing chair, lost in thought. Hearing my knock and spying me standing in the doorframe, she sighed.
“You might as well come in, but I have nothing to say.”
“That’s what you tell me every week and then you talk my ear off!” I teased her.
She smiled. “That’s true.”