The Place Mom Calls “Home”: Pacific Care Center
I remember…
Being right across the street from that small Baptist church, tarnished and tattered, but the Lord’s house nonetheless. Cheesy block-lettered quotes hung on the welcome sign, the only thing to force a smile on my face.
Walking, hesitantly, step by heavy step, up the smoke filled walkway leading to the patio, where all the nurses would be sucking that cancer into their lungs, addicted to a drug that they couldn’t really see. And content with that.
Being greeted by Pat, who would smile at us, but we didn’t know this stranger who was trying so hard to be friendly, to welcome us into foreign territory, a land whose customs we didn’t know and didn’t care to ever know.
Entering and saying hi to the receptionist, and seeing yourself in the huge mirror, with that scared look in your eyes. The young innocence, the fresh face compared to the elderly, hallowed looks that bore into you from all around.
The meals at the table that had to be tall enough for wheelchairs to fit under it. Sitting in those high, dirty, straightbacked chairs, watching food flying in all directions as if a 4 year old was eating. The floor had to be mopped every 5 minutes it seemed, the creamed corn splattered everywhere and crumbs sticking to it.
The pregnant teenager with the greasy, stringy hair covering her face serving meals in the kitchen, with the baggy, plastic gloves hanging like a sheet over her hands.
Waiting for Mom to just finish up so we could go into her room and get away from the noise and the smells and just talk there. Talk about how life had changed, how this was a new part of acceptance, and hear the complaints that ravaged my ears.
The allotted smoke time every two hours during daylight that couldn’t be missed OR ELSE, and the waiting around for life to return again.
The physical therapy room, where Mom’s stiff legs would be bent in ways that they could never do themselves, without the help of a trained professional moving them and massaging and managing the wrecked muscles that tensed permanently inside the skin.
Margaret, the lady that always wanted you to snap the device that hooked her to her walking “companion,” which really just looked like piping held together for support, just like she asks everyone who walks by her, with those drooping, pleading, fearful eyes, even though the nurses say you can’t; she’s connected for a reason; she would break a hip in her fragile state.
The universal remote that Mom kept in her wheelchair bag, giving her powerful control over the lobby and dining room TV so she could watch whatever she wanted whenever she wanted to. Those Cardinals games and court TV shows that couldn’t be skipped because they proved there was life outside of these walls.
The roommates that yell in the night, two to a room, never any privacy, the door always open. Carrie who never knew where she was, clutching that stuffed bear as if it were her child, asking for her husband every five minutes, completely taken over by that mind disease that sucks your memory into a vacuum, never to be returned or cherished again.
The service that wouldn’t show up, forced to work low-paid jobs just to feed their children because the father had left. But who really wants this job? It’s hard work to find skilled nurses and personal assistants who like their job, who don’t walk in those doors with a sour look already in their eyes and a vain conceit hardly concealed by every action in their day.
And the bedtime, ten o’clock every night, right after the smoke time. Mom’s placed into her bed, awaiting the shower that came in the morning (that’s if it even came), waking to a shuffling of feet outside her door by those few who could slowly walk on their own.
And then we walked out, punched in the code in the steel double doors so we could escape, out to fresh air and trees and a parking lot full of cars that had the freedom to leave any time they wanted to—just like we did. And we had to leave her there, to fend for herself because we couldn’t take her with us.
