The Final Chorus at the End of Forgotten

All nursing homes reek. The one Dad is in is no exception. Immediately upon walking through the door, I feel like I am drowning, like I am underwater. The smell is hung long, and strong, like a smoldering curtain across the space. It is smothering. It slaps me in the face, and clings thickly to the edges of my nose, and lies across my skin. Later I will need to shower, and to change my clothes to get away from it. But still it permeates everything, inside and out. It has infected my thoughts. I cannot think of my dad now, without smelling that horrible odor.

It is the smell of disinfectant used mostly as a perfume to disguise. It is the smell of urine and shit wafting down the hallways on waves of spasm and nausea. It is the smell of confusion whirling like a tornado on the cusp of lost thoughts, and constant uncertainty.

It is the smell of waiting.

There is an astringent tang to the taste of the wait, bitter spit on the tip of the tongue. Everybody is waiting for something in the nursing home. Some people are just waiting for the next meal or snack. Others are waiting for the next breathing treatment, as they gasp for a breath in air thick enough to chew. Some are waiting for a bus from 1943 that has already come and gone; while others are waiting for visitors who will never arrive; or for family, long gone, to come and take them out of this horrible place.

They all wait for the eternal wait to be over.
Helplessness is draped like a black veil across fragile bodies. Trodden down spirits and crushed souls are swathed in the twist of broken promises.

“Where am I, and why am I here? When will I go home?” The questions scream in the wind with the smell reeking.

“I never want to get out of my bed in the morning,” an old woman with big, beautiful blank eyes sings. It is Dad’s first Sunday afternoon in the nursing home, and I am passing the time banging out some blues chords on a beat up old piano that has been shoved like an afterthought into the corner of a small recreation room. A single jaded sunbeam struggles through a grimy, unwashed window and casts the hopelessness of late afternoon across the worn tile floor. Residents, the pallor of jaundice collect like gathering dust around the piano. Some smile revealing neglect; their yellow teeth and missing dentures a testimony to their care. Left over lunch is still smeared across unshaven chins, and floats across swollen gums, and cracked lips. Many sit slumped over in their wheel chairs, left their by attendants, or simply exhausted from their meager roll down the hallway. Some drift in and out of consciousness. They are all lost souls, like the misplaced memories at the heart of someone’s missing life. The profound sense of the forgotten haunts their faces, and peeks out from beneath their multitude of folds and wrinkles, and life experiences. Life in the nursing home is hard, harder than living; much harder than dying, and a tragic way to end a life.

“Come here. Come here. Come here.” An old woman repeats over and over again, like a never ending chorus. She is talking to no one and everyone. She is calling for her past, or maybe reaching for the end.

“Fun, fun, fun,” my dad adds to the underplaying chorus of voices that play incessantly in the back ground, intonating sarcasm and irony, as he looks wistfully around himself. “A very odd place,” he says, as he struggles to keep his own tears in his eyes. Watching him is breaking my heart. Unsure of what we should say to each other next, he looks down at his folded hands resting on his lap. I turn and bang out a few more blues notes on the piano. “Fun, fun, fun,” he repeats so softly I can barely hear him. He too is waiting, waiting for this chorus to end, at the end of forgotten.