wristband.
“Which is why I recall meeting Paul so vividly. A moment of utter flummoxness when I confidently walked in with a little cup full of medications, and routinely asked Paul for his name and birth date. And he pleasantly responded with a faintly beatific smile and a bit bemused look that seemed to say something like I’d love to help you but I really don’t have any idea. I had never met an aphasic. I stammered something to the preceptor like ‘What-do-I-do-now?’ I remember acutely, she answered: ‘Just give him the medication. We all know he’s Paul West.’ ”
From then on, Liz mainly appeared alone, and something about her manner with Paul touched me. For one thing, his plight didn’t seem to disquiet or bewilder her. Had she worked with a handicapped person before? Maybe a grandparent with a stroke? She wasn’t at all awkward spoon-feeding him—Did she have children? She didn’t raise her voice as if he were deaf, and she spoke with him at all times like a grown-up, often smiling or joking. Her tone with Paul was strict, yet kind. When she told him it was a good idea to get out of bed and sit in the armchair for a while, just to change position, and he sulkily refused, she lifted his back up, spun his legs off the bed, shouldered his weight, and helped him into the chair—while chattering good-naturedly nonstop—before he could mobilize any sort of resistance. I laughed. He laughed. She laughed.
“Predatory nursing,” she explained with an impish smile and a wink.
Then I noticed her socks. Dressed all in the mandatory white, she was sporting a pair of socks with loud orange spots. A woman who likes cute socks, I thought, someone after my own heart . It couldn’t be easy to imprint one’s personality on a boring uniform.
Liz told me later that when she overheard the floor nurses grumbling about Paul’s flights, instead of disapproval she had felt a guilty twinge of amused respect. Paul was obviously a feisty contrarian, one wily enough to slide out of his gown when the nurses weren’t looking and hightail it toward the door. She had to admit she admired that, even if, from a nursing standpoint, she also had total empathy with the lament of “He’s noncompliant !”
I would come to learn that Liz’s mom had had a stroke when Liz was young, and Liz had watched her stagger down hallways, struggle with simple tasks, and slowly relearn how to use her body, while nonetheless raising three small children. In time, her mother recovered fully, and returned to teaching kindergarten in the challenging schools of urban Washington, D.C. I think Liz had gradually absorbed her tone of determined goodwill, caring and amusing, but brooking no dispute. The “ SIT down, we’re all going to be reading NOW ” tone of a teacher who finds pleasure in teaching and chasing after a posse of five-year-olds every day. Her father was a minister in a small Lake Wobegonish Midwestern town. Noticing me getting more and more bedraggled, she cautioned me about needing to “take care of the caregiver,” and suggested that I go home for a hot bath and a nap.
She was right, of course, caregiving takes a colossal toll, and I was feeling its legendary strain.
CHAPTER 8
T O THE AMAZEMENT OF ALL, PAUL BEGAN TO SAY MORE words, and even string some together, but his mood was bleak.
“Finished,” he muttered in a despairing tone, his face expressionless as pounded copper.
“You’re feeling finished. Are you depressed?” I asked, feeling eroded and hollow myself, yet concerned.
Paul nodded yes, then groped for a long while. His mind seemed to bulge as a word threatened to surface. Finally, his face withered into an image of outright scorn for the thing he had to say, but getting on with it nonetheless he added: “beaten.”
After thirty-five years of our living together, I could taste the acrid depths of his despair. “You’re feeling finished and beaten?”
Paul’s eyes welled with tears. I wrapped an arm
“Which is why I recall meeting Paul so vividly. A moment of utter flummoxness when I confidently walked in with a little cup full of medications, and routinely asked Paul for his name and birth date. And he pleasantly responded with a faintly beatific smile and a bit bemused look that seemed to say something like I’d love to help you but I really don’t have any idea. I had never met an aphasic. I stammered something to the preceptor like ‘What-do-I-do-now?’ I remember acutely, she answered: ‘Just give him the medication. We all know he’s Paul West.’ ”
From then on, Liz mainly appeared alone, and something about her manner with Paul touched me. For one thing, his plight didn’t seem to disquiet or bewilder her. Had she worked with a handicapped person before? Maybe a grandparent with a stroke? She wasn’t at all awkward spoon-feeding him—Did she have children? She didn’t raise her voice as if he were deaf, and she spoke with him at all times like a grown-up, often smiling or joking. Her tone with Paul was strict, yet kind. When she told him it was a good idea to get out of bed and sit in the armchair for a while, just to change position, and he sulkily refused, she lifted his back up, spun his legs off the bed, shouldered his weight, and helped him into the chair—while chattering good-naturedly nonstop—before he could mobilize any sort of resistance. I laughed. He laughed. She laughed.
“Predatory nursing,” she explained with an impish smile and a wink.
Then I noticed her socks. Dressed all in the mandatory white, she was sporting a pair of socks with loud orange spots. A woman who likes cute socks, I thought, someone after my own heart . It couldn’t be easy to imprint one’s personality on a boring uniform.
Liz told me later that when she overheard the floor nurses grumbling about Paul’s flights, instead of disapproval she had felt a guilty twinge of amused respect. Paul was obviously a feisty contrarian, one wily enough to slide out of his gown when the nurses weren’t looking and hightail it toward the door. She had to admit she admired that, even if, from a nursing standpoint, she also had total empathy with the lament of “He’s noncompliant !”
I would come to learn that Liz’s mom had had a stroke when Liz was young, and Liz had watched her stagger down hallways, struggle with simple tasks, and slowly relearn how to use her body, while nonetheless raising three small children. In time, her mother recovered fully, and returned to teaching kindergarten in the challenging schools of urban Washington, D.C. I think Liz had gradually absorbed her tone of determined goodwill, caring and amusing, but brooking no dispute. The “ SIT down, we’re all going to be reading NOW ” tone of a teacher who finds pleasure in teaching and chasing after a posse of five-year-olds every day. Her father was a minister in a small Lake Wobegonish Midwestern town. Noticing me getting more and more bedraggled, she cautioned me about needing to “take care of the caregiver,” and suggested that I go home for a hot bath and a nap.
She was right, of course, caregiving takes a colossal toll, and I was feeling its legendary strain.
CHAPTER 8
T O THE AMAZEMENT OF ALL, PAUL BEGAN TO SAY MORE words, and even string some together, but his mood was bleak.
“Finished,” he muttered in a despairing tone, his face expressionless as pounded copper.
“You’re feeling finished. Are you depressed?” I asked, feeling eroded and hollow myself, yet concerned.
Paul nodded yes, then groped for a long while. His mind seemed to bulge as a word threatened to surface. Finally, his face withered into an image of outright scorn for the thing he had to say, but getting on with it nonetheless he added: “beaten.”
After thirty-five years of our living together, I could taste the acrid depths of his despair. “You’re feeling finished and beaten?”
Paul’s eyes welled with tears. I wrapped an arm
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