by Stephanie Palazzolo, senior editor
The nursing home looked like a rainbow had thrown up all over it — in the best way possible. Fall colors were everywhere, bright pumpkins sitting on countertops, brown paper leaves strewn over the tables. The rest of my Student Council committee and I walked around diligently, turning on the little plastic candles on the tables and carrying chairs to the long wooden tables. One of the women working there turned to me, grinning. “There’s going to be a big crowd tonight,” she said. I smiled back politely and kept on cleaning up the tables.
Elderly residents and their families began to slowly filter in. They sat down at the tables, laughing and talking with each other. The nursing home residents seemed genuinely joyful; I knew that they probably didn’t get visitors that often, so this must have been a rare and happy occasion for them. I looked around, letting out a satisfied sigh.
“Hey, do you mind helping out with another part of the nursing home?” the woman asked. “They’re a little more difficult there, but it’ll be fine.”
She led two other students and me down the hall and to a pair of large doors. After punching in a few numbers into a keypad, we followed her inside. I hesitated as I stepped into the room.
This area was a stark contrast the loud festivities in the main dining hall. The walls were grey and colorless, apart from a few haphazardly hand-made turkeys hanging from the ceiling. A few residents sat in front of a television, although I couldn’t really tell whether they were actually listening to the droning weatherman or not. The rest of the people there were silently gathered around plastic tables on the other side of the room.
“You can just chat for a while,” the woman said. “We’ll serve them dinner later.” She walked away before I could say anything else.
To be honest, I was nervous — maybe even scared. Half of the people there were probably five times my age, but something about them made me uncomfortable. There seemed to be a totally different feeling in this room. A few of the residents looked up and stared at me.
I gulped and shuffled over to one of the tables, sitting down across from an elderly lady. “Hi there!” I said cheerfully. “How are you doing?”
She looked up, mumbled something, and went back to picking at the tablecloth, crumpling up the carefully-placed white sheets. “Okay then…” After a few more attempts at conversation, I stood up and walked back to the two girls from my committee. We all sat down at the same table, anxiously looking at each other and the other residents there.
Just then, a woman and her husband walked into the room. She sat down at one of the tables next to one of the residents. After chatting with the elderly woman and a couple of nurses for a few minutes, she stood up. “Alright Mom, we’re going to go eat dinner in the front. See you later.” She bent down, hurriedly kissed the woman on the forehead and briskly walked out. A nurse feeding a man next to me leaned over to her friend and whispered, “This is not what I signed up for.”
My heart dropped. How could they say that? I had visited my grandparents’ assisted living home a few times, and I always noticed how happy the residents there were when my sister and I came in to play piano for them or just to chat. And yet these people’s own families couldn’t afford to spend some time with them?
And that’s when I realized that I was no better.
How could I look down on them when I had been sitting there for a half an hour doing nothing to interact with any of the nursing home residents? I hadn’t done any more to help than any of the people I had been silently judging. The residents were no scarier than my own grandparents; all they wanted was some company and somebody to talk to. So I gathered up my courage and stood up. “I’m going to talk to them,” I said.
I strolled around, chatting with a few of the residents. As I laughed and talked with them, I realized that they weren’t much different from me or my own grandparents. One of them excitedly told me about the cards that had been sent to them by his grandchildren and another chatted with me about painting her nails. And as I walked out of the front doors and looked at all the Thanksgiving decorations, I realized that although it hadn’t been the afternoon I had been expecting, it was one that I would always be thankful for.
