When, when will you come back home?
this week of school is over which means i am done with classes. i just have my finals next week and then its all over. im a little burned out from this week so tonight is a great night to sit in and listen to ryan. it is hitting the spot.
yesterday afternoon was my last time volunteering at burcham retirement home. i guess this is where part two comes in from a while ago. that place has taught me a lot about life and dying. once i went back a few weeks ago for the first time since Christmas break, i remembered the importance of being there.
i used to have this intense fear of death when i was younger. i remember staying up countless nights worrying about how quick life is and trying to imagine not being on this earth anymore. while the whole concept of death and everything that has to do with it are still way beyond me, i think i have come a long way in understanding it. but one fear, dying alone, still remains. i think its fair to say no one wants to go that way.
when i started going to burcham, the workers in the recreation office that i helped out in talked about the importance of quality of life. their number one priority is to keep the residents active and feeling some sort of use in continuing to live because the reality is that burcham is most likely where they will take their last breaths. and its hard when the residents realize that. i have seen so many things in the eyes of those people. i can't really describe it.
when the residents see visitors you can see it really brightens up there day that someone has come to visit with them. some of those people are the sweetest i have meet. and it is so damn hard to imagine what some of them are going through. i did a lot of work with the residents on the third floor, ones with various forms of dementia and alzheimer's.
i met one man in the hallway while trying to round up people for a group activity and started having a conversation with him. he asked about me and told me he used to be a prof at MSU and something along the lines of "if you opened a can of navel beans anywhere in the country in the 1970's, it was engineered by me." this was a very sweet old man but about two minutes into the convo, he started from the beginning. it was so sad to stand there and try to have the same exact conversation with this man minutes after it happened the first time.
one time in the fall, i helped out with some music game where one of the residents played piano and all the rest would guess what song it was. you gotta love those old time tunes. at the end of the game, they brought down a woman from the third floor who didn't talk at all. they sat her by the piano and a nurse brought out a violin and gave it to her. the piano player started to play songs and the woman started playing tunes by ear on the violin. the residents were impressed and asked her name but she didn't answer. she was so far gone that she didn't even know her name anymore. i witnessed the power of music, it is one of the first things we gain and one of the last we lose. think about it: we learn the ABC's song before we know what it means.
i got to spend my last day yesterday having a good chat and playing games with about 9 very nice ladies for a while. one of them has very severe dementia. she usually only says "301" which is her room number. this was the first time i heard her say other things. she says things abstractly with this soft and shaky mississippi accent. it is truly very sweet. sometimes you can exchange thoughts but very rarely. seeing people loosing their minds like this can be so fucking hard to see, at least for me. its hard to hold your tongue and pretend like everything is ok and keep activities going. i guess i kept going back because i didn't want them to be alone because i would hate that. i really enjoyed being able to visit with all the residents there and it was such a weird mixture of sadness and joy to see there eyes light up when they had someone to visit with. i still can't understand how some people leave this earth sometimes not even knowing they exist anymore. there are some really terrible illnesses out there that pretty much end a persons mental life before their physical life is over. its just so unfair to go out that way. one thing is for sure that while we all will die at some point, no one should just be left to wither away. no matter how far gone someone is there is still use in sharing something with them. my appreciation for life has gone up so much from this. and i think i wont ever be able to fully explain it.
yesterday afternoon was my last time volunteering at burcham retirement home. i guess this is where part two comes in from a while ago. that place has taught me a lot about life and dying. once i went back a few weeks ago for the first time since Christmas break, i remembered the importance of being there.
i used to have this intense fear of death when i was younger. i remember staying up countless nights worrying about how quick life is and trying to imagine not being on this earth anymore. while the whole concept of death and everything that has to do with it are still way beyond me, i think i have come a long way in understanding it. but one fear, dying alone, still remains. i think its fair to say no one wants to go that way.
when i started going to burcham, the workers in the recreation office that i helped out in talked about the importance of quality of life. their number one priority is to keep the residents active and feeling some sort of use in continuing to live because the reality is that burcham is most likely where they will take their last breaths. and its hard when the residents realize that. i have seen so many things in the eyes of those people. i can't really describe it.
when the residents see visitors you can see it really brightens up there day that someone has come to visit with them. some of those people are the sweetest i have meet. and it is so damn hard to imagine what some of them are going through. i did a lot of work with the residents on the third floor, ones with various forms of dementia and alzheimer's.
i met one man in the hallway while trying to round up people for a group activity and started having a conversation with him. he asked about me and told me he used to be a prof at MSU and something along the lines of "if you opened a can of navel beans anywhere in the country in the 1970's, it was engineered by me." this was a very sweet old man but about two minutes into the convo, he started from the beginning. it was so sad to stand there and try to have the same exact conversation with this man minutes after it happened the first time.
one time in the fall, i helped out with some music game where one of the residents played piano and all the rest would guess what song it was. you gotta love those old time tunes. at the end of the game, they brought down a woman from the third floor who didn't talk at all. they sat her by the piano and a nurse brought out a violin and gave it to her. the piano player started to play songs and the woman started playing tunes by ear on the violin. the residents were impressed and asked her name but she didn't answer. she was so far gone that she didn't even know her name anymore. i witnessed the power of music, it is one of the first things we gain and one of the last we lose. think about it: we learn the ABC's song before we know what it means.
i got to spend my last day yesterday having a good chat and playing games with about 9 very nice ladies for a while. one of them has very severe dementia. she usually only says "301" which is her room number. this was the first time i heard her say other things. she says things abstractly with this soft and shaky mississippi accent. it is truly very sweet. sometimes you can exchange thoughts but very rarely. seeing people loosing their minds like this can be so fucking hard to see, at least for me. its hard to hold your tongue and pretend like everything is ok and keep activities going. i guess i kept going back because i didn't want them to be alone because i would hate that. i really enjoyed being able to visit with all the residents there and it was such a weird mixture of sadness and joy to see there eyes light up when they had someone to visit with. i still can't understand how some people leave this earth sometimes not even knowing they exist anymore. there are some really terrible illnesses out there that pretty much end a persons mental life before their physical life is over. its just so unfair to go out that way. one thing is for sure that while we all will die at some point, no one should just be left to wither away. no matter how far gone someone is there is still use in sharing something with them. my appreciation for life has gone up so much from this. and i think i wont ever be able to fully explain it.