Bridging the Gap
We toilet them, empty commodes, change diapers, bathe, dress and undress them. We brush hair and teeth, clean dentures and hearing aids, cut toenails. We put them to sleep. We wake them up. We feed them.
But the job is not just about keeping our “residents”—they live here, and so that’s what we call them—clean and dry and fed. It’s about talking to them, listening to them, calming their fears, answering the same question a dozen times. It’s about learning how they experience their circumscribed, fragmented world and trying to connect with them by bridging the gap between their reality and ours. It’s about discovering that part of them that is still very much alive, the part that loves to listen to music, or sit in the sun, or eat a chocolate-chip cookie, or watch a Bette Davis movie. The part that responds to touch, that needs and wants to be hugged.
This is important work, essential work, physically and emotionally demanding work. It is also minimum-wage work.
I have an employed spouse, heath insurance, a home, three healthy kids and a brand new car. I am working here by choice, to immerse myself in the lives of those with Alzheimer’s and the lives of those who care for them. I am working here to gather material for a book.
Jasmine, my co-worker, is a 24-year-old high-school drop-out with a 7-year-old son, a car that died in somebody’s driveway and a voucher for federally subsidized housing that she has just now received after three years of waiting. She has translucent skin, inky blue-black hair and six missing teeth.