Nana

“Help me! Help me!!” These were the words that echoed through the blue and white tile hall on Monday night.  “Please, someone help me.”  I could hear my grandmother calling for help two doors down from the nurses station before I ever entered her room at The Oaks.  Panicked I ran down the hall and asked, “Nana what is wrong?” “I am wet everywhere,everywhere,” she said! 

“It hurt’s! It hurt’s!!” Where does it hurt Nana? “Everywhere,” she said! I rushed out of her room to find a nurse for help.  There, behind the nurse’s station, “Can you help me?” I asked. The very polite lady informed me that she was not the nurse on duty that I needed to ask someone else for help.  I spotted another staff personnel in the hallway and asked for immediate help.  Please help, my grandmother has been calling for help she is in pain and soaked everywhere.  Minutes seemed like a half an hour before the nurse leisurely made her way to room 102. 

I was sure glad that I had gone in for a nightly visit because there was no telling how long my grandmother had been calling for help. 

The past few weeks my grandmother’s seventy-nine year old diabetic body had taken its earthly beaten.  You see, just six weeks ago a self-sufficient, independent woman was told that she needed a very routine procedure done, gall bladder surgery.  The laparoscopic surgery could have been deemed success maybe if the doctor had not cut her liver. We will never know on this side of heaven.  Post surgery required a drain tube which my grandmother was not capable of tending to herself.  We encouraged her to enter a short term rehabilitation center at The Oaks.  The goal was to get in, get well, and go home.  Her body fought a downhill battle since the surgery mentally and physically.  She went in to the Oaks with the capability to walk, stand, talk, eat and function at a very independent level. When she overextended her welcome to six weeks at the rehabilitation center, she could barley lift her head, she had not eaten for days and her words came out jumbled.  

Everyone has a story but no one has time to listen these days.  We are too preoccupied with the busyness of life that we no longer take time to stop and smell the roses.  These precious elders are our loved ones.  They are not a part of the island of misfit toys.  They are not practice patients for the Operation game.  Their eyes have seen more than we can fathom.  Their stories could fill up pages in a book.  Their dreams far exceed our imaginations. 

Have you ever witnessed the lovely entrance to the Methodist Oaks? Once you cross the railroad tracks your eyes gaze upon the one hundred year old oak trees.  It’s a whimsical of limbs dancing in the air.  The trunks are so large which give you a hint of their age.  The branches cascade into the sky and not a drop of sun can be seen in the shadow of the shade.  Once you soak in the beauty of life in the oak trees, and glance to your left you will see a pond surrounded by weeping willows and one old wooden cross.  The entrance symbolizes: life and death.  Life in the prosperous growth of the aged oak trees.  Life in the aged loved ones just beyond the beauty of the entrance.  Did you know that a weeping willow weeps and bends its branches in the shape of a tear for sorrow and for honor? In the deepest darkest hours our loved ones weep in sorrow and in honor.  Life in the thirty-three sinless years that Christ walked the edges of the earth.  Death in the cross that crucified him.  

The goal was to get in, get well and go home. Well, Nana went home today- through the gates of Heaven and into the arms of her creator.