Nicole Kallevig is a senior at Southwest Minnesota State University. Originally from Newport, MN, she has an incredibly strong love for the city. She has viewed her four years in rural Minnesota as an opportunity to experience the undeniable variation in lifestyles and enjoys incorporating her observations in her writing. Currently, her favorite writers include Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Palahniuk, and Sylvia Plath and she considers her professors at SMSU to be some of her greatest influences. She will graduate in May 2008 with degrees in Literature/Creative Writing and Psychology.

For the longest time I couldn’t understand why chills would claw their way up my spine every time I set foot into the fluorescently illuminated lobbies. When I would express this fear to my friends, they would typically respond by assuring me it was completely natural to be uncomfortable when dying people surrounded you. However, I was never convinced that this was why it was so unnerving to enter a nursing home. Thankfully, except for occasional visits to distant relatives whom I rarely recognized, I managed to avoid them.

That changed when my aunt asked me to go with my cousin, Rebekah, to volunteer at a nursing home over the summer. Needless to say, I was less than thrilled with this concept. I was happy that Rebekah was willing to volunteer within her community, but the idea of entering a place where I was surrounded by passive nurses and silvery-haired grandmothers caused my heart to race.

I spend time with my eighteen-year-old cousin, Rebekah, every week. She has Downs Syndrome, so a “helper” accompanies her whenever her parents are not home or she participates in volunteer activities or after-school events. It’s hard for her because the only time she spends with her peers is at school and every week she greets me with an enthusiastic, “Want to go to a movie this weekend?” in hopes that she might get out of the house for a while. I decided to suck up my apprehension, I was determined to get as much from the experience as Rebekah would from helping out in her community.

On our first day at the Senior Center, Rebekah was given the task of folding garbage bags. Focused only on her job, she would take one black plastic bag from the pile, fold it once in half, then into thirds, and replace it in an empty box so they could be stored more easily. Rebekah would be so focused on her task that I would often have to remind her to push her glasses up because she didn’t realize they were sliding down her nose or brush strands of strawberry blonde hair back behind her ear as they would curtain her eyes, it was good to know that somebody took this job seriously. We worked on the same task for the first few weeks we had been volunteers. Sometimes we would receive accusatory glares from the seniors seated in their wheelchairs for having the audacity to invade their kitchen space and time seemed to drag on forever. Sometimes I would get so bored that I would pick up bags and start folding them myself, even though I was only there to monitor Rebekah as she did the “work.”

Then one day, three weeks into garbage bag duty, Elmer rolled up in his wheel chair and paused on the empty side of the table. His frame was hunched over in the chair, as though his shoulders were too heavy to carry. He wore large-framed glasses that sat high on the bridge of his nose and the stubbly white hairs that remained on his head stood erect. Reaching across the table, he took a bag from the pile, and began folding it identical to the way Rebekah was folding hers. I smiled at him and said hello, but he simply acknowledged me with a smile and a nod. Elmer’s bags weren’t folded perfectly because of his shaking hands, but we added them to the pile anyway. Rebekah enjoyed watching Elmer fold his bags, often demonstrating the art of bag folding to him when his folds got a little sloppy. “See, like this,” she would explain as she held a bag in the air and folded it. In the class of folding garbage bags, Elmer became her student. I would watch them with amusement, it was incredible to me how Elmer seemed to get so much enjoyment out of something that seemed so mundane, but I shrugged it off thinking he must simply be bored.

Soon after, we were introduced to water duty. Rebekah and I would take a cart to the kitchen, fill the cooler with ice, and load the cart with cups and a full pitcher. Then we’d roam up and down the hallways trying not to run over the nurses bustling back and forth from room to room. We were given a list of seniors who were to receive water. Rebekah would knock on the door and in an almost whisper ask, “Would you like some fresh water?” Some of them would bark at us, they didn’t want ice or someone had already brought them water and it was too soon for more. Others would gladly accept a new, cold glass. At first, my favorites were the ones who were asleep. Then we’d just tiptoe in, pluck their glass from the nightstand, and replace it, leaving them none the wiser until they woke up and were met with a full glass.

I was appreciative of a task that involved a little more activity than sitting at a table for two hours. Generally, the seniors were friendly and made small talk with us as we’d replace their glasses. The day we met Sid, he became my favorite. His face was decorated with deep wrinkles and he wore a navy blue trucker’s hat that was too big for his head. He was lounging in his light red recliner while watching “Jeopardy” when we arrived at his door.

“Would you like a new glass of water?” Rebekah recited quietly.

“WHAT?” Sid barked, the rasp of his voice scratching my ears. We stepped into his room a little further.

“Would you like a glass of waaaa-ter?” Rebekah repeated a little louder, drawing out the first syllable as though he was a foreigner who couldn’t understand the language. I pointed to his empty water glass.

“Oh, yes,” he nodded, “but not too full! I can’t lift it if it’s too full…and no ice!”

Rebekah and I went back to the cart and returned with an ice-free glass, three-fourths full. Rebekah carefully carried the water into his cramped room and went to set the glass back on his night tray as I followed behind.

“NOT THERE!” he jerked up from his reclined position. Rebehkah’s flustered eyes met mine and she thrust the glass into my hand.

“Where would you like it?” I asked loudly.

“A little more to the left…more…more…now back a bit...there,” he directed.

Sid has clearly developed an eye for detail during his stay at the Senior Center, I thought as we left his room.

The worst part of this job, though, was that we had a front row seat when it came to viewing interactions between the seniors and the busy nurses. One day an old woman in a wheel chair was sitting in the lounge and asked a nurse at the station what time it was only to be met with a wave of the hand, signaling that she was too busy to answer. I can’t even count the number of times we witnessed a disinterested nurse, hurrying to move on to their next task, that would cut off someone in the middle of telling their story. As much as I hated to admit it, I knew it must be necessary. After all, there were only so many hours in the day, and it was even hard for Rebekah and I to leave the rooms of seniors who were trying to make conversation so we could finish our jobs on time. A few times Rebekah would even take charge stating firmly, “Okay, we have to go now.” After observing and experiencing these interactions, I began to realize that it wasn’t that I was afraid of the elderly; I was afraid of becoming one of them, too often being shrugged off by those around them.

Finally, Rebekah and I were promoted to the Adult Daycare Center. We never knew what to expect upon our arrival. Sometimes Rebekah would be the designated BINGO caller, other days she would lead exercises that the seniors performed while sitting in their padded chairs, and some days she would get to help with games or arts and crafts. The Adult Daycare Center was chock full of characters. Most of them didn’t actually live in the nursing home, but their families dropped them off there to be taken care of while they were at work. It wasn’t long until we became familiar with the various personalities hidden within each of the seniors.

A few, especially, stood out from the crowd. Alice would usually wear the same red sweater every time we saw her and her curly, white hair often glistened in the light. She constantly hoarded the BINGO chips, refusing to share with whomever she was sitting next to. The minute the tray of BINGO chips was placed on the table, she would try to sneak as many as she could. She’d set them on her lap, in a pile next to her card, and held small stacks of them in her hands as though there was a shortage of the red, white, and blue chips and she might run out at the very moment the BINGO caller would proclaim her winning number.
Aaron consistently met Rebekah and I with, “Well, there are my girlfriends,” whenever we would enter the room. Aaron was the tallest resident there and was never seen without Skippy, the little white poodle that served as their mascot. It was rare to see him leave the raggedy green recliner that sat in the corner of the Adult Daycare room until it was time to get his jacket on and go home.

Paul’s head was framed by mix of silver and white hair, but he was completely bald on top. He was the troublemaker of the bunch, constantly pulling pranks on the other residents. He would steal his neighbor’s cookie during snack time, hide the head nurse’s notepad, and once he even bounced a tennis ball off of Rebekah’s head during a group game of catch. This surprised me as I would have never imagined elderly people acting in such a way, but what surprised me more was how Rebekah just sat in her chair, stunned at what had just happened. She hadn’t expected such things from grown adults, either.

We got to know each of the residents better every day and, before long, I stopped dragging my feet as we would journey down the long, narrow hallway to the nursing home. I actually began to look forward to our visits and spending time with this group of people who, at times, had more spunk than I did. As the summer neared its finale, I was met with a surprising pang of sadness when I realized that our visits would soon come to an end.

The last Wednesday of the summer, we arrived at the Center and were asked to do water duty. We found our way to the water cart and began the routine. We’d gotten halfway down the list when we came to the name of a senior who had always greeted us with a friendly, “Well, hello girls,” when we’d knock at her door. She would usually be maneuvering her knitting needles while half paying attention to the TV, her fragile frame seeming as though it was about to be swallowed into the oversized recliner she sat in. Rebekah went to knock, but stopped when she got to the doorway.

“Nobody’s in there,” she said clearly confused.

I peeked in behind Rebekah. The room was completely empty of its former occupant. The bed was stripped of the stale, white sheets, and only the blue and white striped mattress remained on the frame. The dandelion yellow walls were vacant where a few photos of people, who we assumed to be family members, donning Kodak smiles had once lived.

“No water here, then,” Rebekah stated nonchalantly and began to push the cart to the next room.

I followed, but my mind lingered behind. To Rebekah, it was just an empty room, because she didn’t understand. But to me, it meant that someone who was alive just last week had died. It made me think of all the personalities we had gotten to know during our time at the nursing home, and how full of life they all were despite living in this place where death is a common occurrence. I admired them for being able to continue living while their comrades slowly vanished around them.

Inevitably, summer ended and Rebekah and I said goodbye to the Senior Center. As much as I had dreaded the experience, it was difficult to think that I would probably never see Elmer, Sid, Alice, Aaron, Paul, or any of the seniors again. Though I still greet memories of monotonously folding bags with disdain, I had more fun with a group of elderly people in a nursing home than I had ever thought was possible. If I ever find myself a member of a nursing home, I hope that I retain as much spirit as the people Rebekah and I encountered on our Wednesday afternoon visits .