The daytime nurse reminds me that tonight is the
all-male choir program in the dining room.
Do I want to wear something special for the occasion?
I show her my comfy gym outfit. I have chair yoga at ten and a Scrabble
rematch with Mr. García after lunch. Any singing Romeo who spots me in the
audience tonight and is hot for my phone number can just take me the way I am
dressed, walker and all.
The evening nurse works our wing because we are
ambulatory. We can bathe ourselves and
change our own diapers. He’s afraid to
touch us, afraid we are contagious. In a
way he is right. Everyone ages; everyone
dies.
When it is time for the evening program, I shuffle
back to the dining room on my own. A
creature of habit, I head for the one spot where I sit for breakfast, lunch,
and dinner. It is my lucky chair. This is where I beat Mr. García
at Scrabble for the fifth time earlier in the day. I lean my walker against it before I make my
rounds.
“Hola, Gloria.” In her late sixties, my friend
once danced with Patrick Swayze in the movie Dirty Dancing, but now she is
confined to a wheelchair. She lost her
left foot to diabetes two years ago and is scheduled for vascular surgery on
her right calf next week.
“Que tal, Ricardo.” Our resident playboy is in his nineties and
silenced by a stroke, yet his wheelchair is surrounded by a covey of elderly
women in walkers and wheelchairs, all vying for his attention. He waves at me with his good hand, but I just
keep on walking.
I wave at the Colonel but he only has eyes for his
wife. He scoots his chair closer to her
wheelchair and takes her hand. He lives
in my wing and she lives at the other end of the complex. Once her Alzheimer’s got so bad he could not
take care of her any longer, he moved her here.
He followed soon after to be close to her.
She doesn’t understand his gesture and looks at his
hand. Her memories of him have slowly dissolved into the corners of her mind,
but from the way he looks at her his haven’t faded in sixty-five years. I think of my husband and make my way back to
my seat.
The choir files in and I notice the male nurse standing
by the door. He scans the room and I do
too. He frowns. He sees remnants, the one facet that exists of us now. He would
be surprised to know the full fabric we conceal under these remnants. When we were his age we lived full, loud
lives. We danced and loved and laughed. We have stories to tell.
He sees me looking at him and I frown. I feel sorry for him.
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