My history with Misericordia Health Centre is a long one…going back to before I was born. My mother went to nursing school there. She graduated from the nursing school and went on to work decades at the Misericordia Hospital. I remember going there once as a little girl when she went late at night for an emergency call…and napping in the staff room, until the doctor came and showed me a very recently removed appendix in a jar of solution.
That hospital went on to meet my health needs on several occasions…wisdom teeth, and some tricky pregnancy stuff…I owe the very fact that I have children to that hospital and the people who work there.
I don’t take that lightly.
Then, years ago, when I moved back from California, I was looking for a job, and to my mother’s (and my) surprise, ended up getting a job at “Easy Street” doing out-patient rehabilitation. Between maternity leaves and internal shifts there, I also worked at discharge planning for patients on a medical ward, then in interim care for a time, and then as the Occupational Therapist at Misericordia Place, the personal care home…when it was newly opened.
When Misericordia Hospital turned into Misericordia Health Centre, it was a painful process for the little community hospital where many had worked their entire careers…where ward clerks and physicians and dieticians and occupational therapists sat down for lunch together and talked about our families, and checked in on who had heard from those that had recently retired. The transition shook many folks up, but the place went on to create a new and valuable niche for itself in delivering health care services.
My mother is still involved in activities at Misericordia. One year, she was proud to say that the pine tree that had gotten too big for the front yard was the Christmas tree at the corner of Wolseley and Sherbrook. The place is in her blood, I think…and so it was thoughtful and kind of the place to offer her a couple of tickets to her for the production, “Minding Dad”…and then thoughtful and kind of her to let me use the tickets as she was out of town.
“Minding Dad” was a play of beauty…of the pain and energy involved in caring for a parent with Alzheimer’s. Dad had some standard lines, “How are you kids doing…you have two?”, “Did you bring a car…can you bust me out of this place?”, “You seeing any women?” that repeated themselves and required the patience of Job to continue to re-answer. Dan, his son, goes from ready to pull his hair out at old issues his dad brings up in an uninhibited inappropriate way, to engaged and loving as they exchange some real raw, candid caring and love.
It’s not easy taking care of aging parents. The play gave a glimpse into the relentless grind. In the past month, two of our team have experienced the passing of a parent.
That was hard.
But they lived a different kind of hard for months and months before.
Appointments. Infections. Hospitalizations. Scary moments and then rebounding. More appointments. Decisions. Housing transitions. More health issues. Pain…terrible pain. Readmissions to hospital. New health issues created from the treatments for existing health issues. More decisions…hard ones.
The ups and downs which we heard about at the office were painful for us to hear…so to experience it first hand was very difficult.
And all of this in between work, friends, running a household, tending to other family and the rest of life.
Caring for someone whose role it was to take care of you is tough. The role reversal comes naturally for some over time, gradually…and for others never becomes comfortable.
The relationship a person has had with an aging parent evolves out of the relationship you had with them when aging wasn’t an issue. So…caring for an aging parent is tricky when they’ve had a drinking problem, or had a temper, or were never close.
Kenneth Brown, the Playwright and actor that portrayed, “Dad”, knows this story first hand…his father has Alzheimers. As he was introducing the play, he became “verklempt”, letting us know this story is about love…
Love in all it’s confusion, pain, joy, messiness, difficulty, painful endings and sometimes, even more painful “continuings” as the long journey of aging meanders slowly along in life.
It was good to go back to Misericordia, walk through the doors, see the familiar place, and sit in the auditorium. Some things felt the same. But it also clearly felt different. It had changed, too.
Kind of like aging.
Some things, like the love, don’t change. It looks different, is expressed different, but the core is there.
Other things…the shape, style, and rhythm hardly resemble what was.
And there is loss of what was, even in the awareness of seeing the special of now.
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