Ah, back to routine. Jetlagged.
Back I went to my job at the school. I missed those kids. Sometimes... until they all started whistling in art, until they started talking back in geography.
I was sad to see "my kid". It's a degenerative disease. He will get worse. Then he will die. There is no stopping that. But the process is so degrading, so sad. And these last weeks, he lost more independence, and today, helping him, I wanted to cry.
I worked a double shift today, running from one job to another. Crazy. I walked into the nursing home. Four people gone in those two weeks I was gone. Two died, two moved. Four goodbyes.
Our new lady takes the prize for the most foul mouth I have ever seen on a female. She's vile. She hits, kicks, spits, and rams us and other patients with her walker. She swore at us and called us only by swearwords or "liar" all evening. She called a heavier worker "piggy, piggy" all night.
Another new lady is sweet as anything, but only speaks Spanish. Her husband was extremely abusive, so only women can attend to her or she flinches and cries. I hug her tonight and tuck her in. So glad she lived longer than him and we can now spoil her rotten. I pull out my Spanish, dust it off, and try to talk. She smiles. She recognizes my trying and is pleased. No one else here speaks Spanish, so she has been lonely.
Another new lady speaks English, but badly with a Russian accent. We're becoming more international in the nursing home as the immigrants who live in this country age, too. Portuguese, Ukranian, Indian, German, Dutch, Spanish - we've got them all. I'm becoming more and more valuable in a staff that is basically monolingual. I can talk to those who no one else can.
I'm tired tonight. But routine is nice. Work is nice. Friends who knew where we were going to ask how things went. To rest in their care. Friends who have ideas of people to try.
But I value most the drive home. The sheer exhaustion and darkness of the drive home. When I listen and talk over with God. Having been beaten up (thankfully by a tiny lady, so I can dodge fast enough), watched life and death, wrestled people in and out of tubs and showers, cried with those who cry, comforted those who accept comfort, then I am at rest, able to hear.
Today I thought that if I try the same things, I will get the same result. And I don't like that result. So why not be brave? Why not risk?
I had a good point I wanted to start with that one day with the counselor. I wrote it out. Ask for permission to read it. But the man interrupted, switched the topic, dove into me again about my integrity and don't I see that what I did was really wrong. And I began to cry again - frustration about being judged wrong, frustration about not being able to share the important point I had prayed over, written out so carefully, and wanted to share.
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