“Somebody stole my man.... Somebody stole my man,” Alta sang as she shuffled her walker forward. It was her favorite song, tuneless, angry and heartbroken. Most often she would sing it as she meandered on her morning constitutional. You always knew, that on these days, Alta was feeling lonely. To me, her singing was humorously tragic. Her lament had the soul of the perfect southern jazz song. It made me smile. But it also made me wish that I had time to spend freely talking to her. But I didn't.
There were others, like the “Relief Society President”, perfect, pure, and pristine, who came out one Sunday ready for church, looked at her panty hose and, echoing the sentiment of most women, said, “Damn panty hose, they got a run in them!” She promptly went back to her room and changed. There was the World War II vet who would wait in his room for family to come. They rarely did. One day he said to me quite bitterly, “I wish I could die. I am ready to die... But He won't take me. Almost everyone I know is gone, but He won't take me.” Being young, I didn't know what to say. How could I find a way to relate to someone who had suffered the horror of war, the pain of old age, and the loss of family and friends. I felt so inadequate. Then there was Norma, who never said a word. But her walls were full of pictures of her young self, smiling, waving, embracing her husband, camping... not the same shell I helped to dress and shower every morning. She never said a word to me; just smiled or grunted in frustration.
But, of all these I remember Alta most.
The first day I had heard her singing her song, I came into her room and found her sitting on her bed and she looked at me and said, “She took him away from me. He left me for THAT women. Left me alone. You be careful! You can never trust a man.” Once again, my bashful tongue left me without reply. How do you comfort an older woman who has been abandoned by her husband? "You'll find someone better?" "He doesn't deserve you!" "Men are jerks!" Everything felt trite and emotionally untrue. And for me, giving a simple hug or a pat on the back was like jumping from the high dive; completely scary. Another time, after her slow march and song, I went into her room and she spoke differently of her husband's betrayal, “He left me, he wasn't supposed to die first. How could he die and leave me, alone!” Her bitterness was the same, her loss just as deep even though this time her husband hadn't run off with another mistress. Death was the female fatal. I wondered which story was true, but knew there wasn't a way to know. Alta suffered from Alzheimers.
It wasn't long before the disease began to take its final advances. I remember walking into her room and seeing feces on the floor; a trail leading to the bathroom with Alta inside it, moaning in pain. That day, I learned part of the process of death, loss of bowel control. As I cleaned up the mess from the floor, I wasn't disgusted. There was a tranquility in the room that minimized the nature of my work. I imagined that maybe her husband, setting the record straight had come, ready to bring her home. The reunion would have been sweeter on the other side of the veil, if that was the case. There wouldn't be any more blue songs for Alta to sing. She would have her man again and know that, maybe, maybe he had never left her.
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