There are paintings on the wall, jigsaw puzzles on the counter and good people all around, but it’s an institution after all and the doors swing one way…
“How do you get out of here?”
Fair question to be asked by someone living in a memory unit and she asked it with a soft smile that held desperation and loss in it.
“You can’t,” I answered. She asks me that question frequently when I am visiting my wife in the memory unit. I’d like to be able to take her hand, lead her out, take her downtown for an ice cream cone but I can’t. I don’t work there, she’s not my family so I just try to let her down gentle.
There’s a knock on my wife’s memory unit door. She opens it a crack. “Can you call my wife?” the man asks. “No, no I can’t do that,” my wife answers gently. She eases the door shut and comes back to sit next to me, a bit sadder than she was before he knocked.
“Help me!” It’s a scream, a plea and who knows what kind of help is needed, or why. The folks in the memory unit know me by now. Not really “know,” but they recognize my presence, and they know I’m not one of them so they hope maybe I can unlock the door that’s between them and memory and give them their lives back. I can’t.
No matter where it is, or what it looks like, this is what an institution is. In our case, it’s a nice one. Colorful art on the wall. Jig-saw puzzles everywhere. Flowers. A big-screen TV, comfortable furniture. Staff folks who are nice and who care but who are over-worked and sometimes wear their frustrations on their faces. But, usually only for a moment and then the smile is back.
When I was a teen-ager back in southern Ohio I baled hay on the county farm, which was the “county home” where they kept people who were mostly what we used to call crazy with nowhere to go, no one who wanted them. It was an old building, but people did what they could to make it a home of sorts. Now we have nicer places and my wife is blessed to be in one. Still, where we are today is a close cousin to that old place out on the edge of town where I baled hay, ate noon meals on hot summer days and listened to the screams and cries.
We’ve changed the decor but not the reality. That leaves me to speak softly and let them down gently and try to feel and respect the pain coming from a place I can’t see into. They aren’t asking much of me, really.
Rich Heiland, has been a reporter, editor, publisher/general manager at daily papers in Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio and New Hampshire. He was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team at the Xenia Daily (OH) Daily Gazette, a National Newspaper Association Columnist of the Year. He has worked as a consultant doing public speaking and training business specializing in customer service, general management, leadership and staff development. He and his wife live in West Chester, PA. He can be reached at [email protected].