Reply To: Shema Koleinu

oomis1105-

blinky-

Thank you for the kind words.

I first visited a nursing home in my mid-late teens and remember how struck I was by the number of people just sitting in the lobby as if they were waiting for something – it could have been a train station or an airport.

Over the years I’ve visited others in nursing homes – mostly relatives – and the visits were somewhat uncomfortable and not as frequent as they should have been.

The first article is a real eye-opener, told by a person who retained her sharp wit and sense of irony while dealing with her reduced physical capability and its accompanying indignity, well-meaning but condescending caretakers, and loneliness.

The second article is a memorial from a son to his mother, describing the erosion of a person’s core, written by one of the master wordsmiths of today.

This thread doesn’t have a catchy title, and the length of the posts can be off-putting, but these are memorable articles that I wanted to share in their entireties.