Everyone’s Daughter, The Thin Edge of Dignity

Everyone’s Daughter, by Dick Weinman, The Thin Edge of Dignity

She’s here every morning. When I go to breakfast in the dining room at my ALF, there she is, sharing a coffee moment with her mother. Some days she’s here twice, mornings before she goes to work, and at dinner at 5:00, after she returns from her work.

It’s not just her mother who benefits from her care and affection, it’s everyone who happens to be gathered for the meal. But breakfast is a good time for the lonely ALF residents to get a smile a shoulder squeeze or back rub, and for some, to be brought their morning coffee.

I had seen her for many weeks, tending to her mother, but I first met her, officially, on-line, when I saw her comment on one of my AARP blogs.

I had written several poems and a narrative about my wife’s Alzheimer’s and my emotional response to her condition. As usual, I posted it on my Facebook page. Soon after, I noticed an email index listing, from a name I didn’t recognize, alerting me to a FB response.

The comment spoke of what it was like to have a parent in the throes of Alzheimer’s, the sadness and frustration that non-remembrance and non-recognition causes in a loved one; in particular, an adult child. I recalled the TV commercial which had the female Voice-Over narrator say, “You gave me my name, and now you don’t remember it”…. or something like that.

I was slow to make the connection between the woman I see every morning and the FB comment. Then it struck – DUH!

So, I asked her. And found out.

I don’t know whether her interaction with the residents has increased since then, or I’ve become more aware, but she’s her mother’s daughter, bringing love and happiness and stability to mom’s confused mind. And she brings the care and empathetic contact that we solitary residents need for emotional nourishment. She’s a caregiver to all. She makes the place a caring place.