A Freshly Made Bed
An act of becoming
My first experience in healthcare was in a lockdown ward at a Veterans Home, and it was the best introduction I could have had. It gave me the perspective I needed to work in healthcare. Every time I walked into this building, I had to be prepared to handle my emotions physically and mentally. I had to dodge spit and swinging fists and hear the occasional, you goddamn cocksucker! Some people say I let things roll off my back too easily and in part, this was due to working at the Veterans Home. The people who were residents in this ward acted out because they had been through a war, most were abandoned by their families and had to accept living in a home that they didn’t want to live in. That’s how I saw it. Many had lost limbs and some had lost eyes; most had broken hearts—they no longer felt valued or useful to society. What did they have to lose?
Every Tuesday morning I was assigned to make each of the beds, using fresh sheets, and then get each resident dressed, showered, and ready for their day; these mornings contained a lot of busy work. I rushed from room to room and as I did, I would walk past a doorway where a resident sat in his wheelchair, holding a bottle of shaving cream, a disposable razor, and the slightest amount of stubble on his face. After the fourth or fifth time of hurrying by him, he would still be sitting there, staring. Feeling pressure, I stopped and looked down as he looked up. He was a tall, slender man, balding with large square rimless glasses. He sat in his wheelchair, holding his shaving cream in one hand, and his disposable razor in the other—offering them to me.
Each of the men on this ward had some form of dementia. I believe he was in the later stages of the disease. He could only mumble words, it was hard to decipher his speech, and his arms and legs were stiff. After five seconds of staring at one another, I pushed him into his room, got down to his level, put the shaving cream on his face, and slowly shaved him. He was adamant about how I shaved him, which was one frustration—having a certain amount of OCD, I had a routine outside of shaving his face that I needed to complete. When I finished he whispered a hoarse thank you. I set the shaving cream and razor next to the sink and rushed out.
When you enter a room and witness a man lying supine on his bed, you can tell, without question, if he is living or dead. I’m not sure if I found him in his bed or if someone else did, but I do remember having to stay in that room with him until the people who were going to wheel him to the morgue arrived. I gently closed his jaw and sat in a chair, never looking at him.
John Willams wrote a beautiful novel entitled, Stoner. This story is from the point of view of William Stoner and embodies his search for love in an absurd world. This is one of many lines that’s stayed with me:
“Now in his middle age he began to know that [love] was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.”
What war he was in? I never asked these things. Maybe he was a military barber in the Korean War? I knew he must’ve lived a purposeful life and improved someone else’s life in some way. But now he was there, alone in his death, without any loved ones by his side. I can only hope that I brought him a sense of purpose, as every morning he saw me, he guided my hand to where it needed to move as I shaved him. Maybe, each time I stopped in front of his doorway, there was a sense of relief for him. Now his imperfect limbs had control, as I gave him mine.