Visits to Tower Hill

Went to visit my grandma today because I’m leaving tomorrow to go back to school. Caught her just before dinner. She was already sitting in the dining room with two friends. But I went in to sit and talk with her for a few minutes before I had to go home.

Every time I see her in the dining room she always sits next to the same two women. Or at least so it seems. And this woman on her right always looks horribly sad and like something is very wrong. Like she wants to get out. Like something is deeply troubling her. I’m not sure of the reason she’s in the nursing home. But her eyes always hold this intensely deep and desperate look. It’s really concerning to me. To almost an overwhelming degree. And today she reached across the table to me and in this hoarse whisper just said “Can you help me?”
Over and over and over. Faster and faster.

And I tried to calm her down and just said, “Of course! What do you need help with?” And then she looked down and kept breathing reallly heavily and then said, with total desperation. “I…I…I don’t know. I don’t know.”

And I think what gets me the most is that everytime I’m there and I see her, she just sits and watches and listens to me interact with my grandma. And she doesn’t like to talk. Just watches.
And for some reason I get this feeling something huge has happened in her past. Something really distressing. And she sees something in my grandma that’s she’s never had. And I don’t think it’s jealousy, it’s just this sad desperation to obtain whatever it is that makes my grandma so joyful and content before her life is over.

It troubled me so tremendously. It was SO utterly sad. And it really frightened me. So much so that I honestly wondered if I’d ever have the emotional/mental stamina to work in a nursing home…