Elisabeth, “Aunt” Barb, and I pushed open the heavy, double doors and walked the long, sunlit hall to another set of doors leading to two different wings of the nursing home. The regular workers that we met—nurses, helpers, and caretakers—said a hurried greeting and hustled off to their monthly meeting, leaving us in charge of the elderly residents. I stayed with Aunt Barb’s mom, Grandma Belsley, while Elisabeth and Aunt Barb punched in the secret code and continued into a different part of the low building.

“Two ladies are out wandering the hall,” Grandma Belsley told me almost as soon as I arrived. “Stay here and guard the doors while I fetch them.” In a low voice, she added, “Just tell them they need a special permit to get through the doors if you catch any trying to escape.” I took my post near the doors and smiled at the three old ladies seated on the couches in the small lobby area. Elizabeth, a mobile, serious, capable-looking woman reminded me of my great-grandmother with her knit brows and slightly tart expression. She sat looking down at a few clutched papers. But Virginia and frail Joyce smiled back. Joyce sat holding a large brown teddy bear. She stroked it and sometimes whispered into its ear, and in her conversations with other residents, she referred to “his” wants or needs. Her curly, grey hair framed a pleasant, somewhat worried-looking face. Whenever she spoke to me, I had to lean close to hear her soft voice.

After Grandma Belsley returned with the two beaming miscreants in tow, we wheeled around a cart and passed out snacks. In one room, a group of residents energetically played Bingo. They loved the small prizes that they won if they managed to fill up an entire card with the colored chips. I heard a few amusing conversations between some of the old folks as we went between the two recreation rooms, sitting area, and the wide corridor. Some refused the proffered food for odd and far-fetched reasons. Others wanted their plastic cups saved for unspecified uses at some future date. Joyce set her bear on the couch next to her when she took her drink, and announced quietly to anyone who cared to listen that “he didn’t need any right now.”

I was struck by the seeming frankness of all the residents and also by their ability to snap in and out of moods. One little lady, who appeared quite harmless and who had smiled broadly in response to my greeting, seemed to want to pick a fight with Virginia several minutes later. For some unknown reason, Virginia’s green sweater and her presence bothered the little woman, who let Virginia know her displeasure with some not-so-pretty language. I managed to steer Virginia to another seat before they came to blows.

But although I smiled at the humorous and childish behavior of some of the residents, I saw many others’ pain, confusion, helplessness, and bitterness. One woman, whom they called Rita, was constricted to a chair. She almost never spoke, but her lips moved as she struggled to free herself from the plastic arm that held her in. Her face contorted in grimaces of hurt and bewilderment. Somehow looking at her almost scared me—she seemed so desperate and despairing. Across the room from Rita a tall, elderly man named Gerald sat in a wheelchair. His kindly face stared with half-closed eyes at his lap, and his hands shook feebly whenever they groped slowly forward to hold something—another hand, a cup, or food. Here was somebody’s father, grandfather, husband—crippled with physical and mental inability—no longer able to lift a child, talk with his wife, laugh at a joke.

What touched me most with pity, though, was Olga. This grey-haired, wrinkled woman would plaintively and almost constantly repeat, “Somebody, help me. Somebody, help me. Somebody, help me…” I stopped by her wheelchair and asked, “What do you need help with, Olga?” She looked up at me. “I’m so mixed-up,” she said. “I don’t even know where I am or what I should do. I probably couldn’t even spell my own name.” I tried a few reassurances, but they sounded trite and useless. After a pause, she said, “I wish I were dead.” I wanted to cry for her—so alone, even among these people—tired, old, worn out—with a brain muddled enough to land her in a nursing home but alert enough to know the pain of confusion. What could I say to that? I thought about it as I helped another resident, and then returned again to Olga’s call of “somebody, help me.” Other workers passed on by with a smile, nod, or “how are you, Olga?” After a while, I wanted to, too. But somehow my hand on her shoulder and conversation seemed to comfort her. I tried to give her hope in heaven without merely disregarding or belittling her sad wishes for death. When talking with her, I felt my own feebleness and inability in the face of her hopelessness—I know I fell short. But when I was about to leave, she surprised me by thanking me for often standing near her. “I know I’m a bother,” she said, and then asked if she could kiss me. Although I felt I failed to truly encourage the confused woman, at least I was able to show a little love…

The big glass doors swung shut behind us as we left Woodhaven that afternoon. What a life, I thought, thankful for my youth, health, family, mental faculties, and, most of all, my faith in a good and loving God. He only would sustain me if I had to live day after day in even such a “nice” nursing home. Even though many of the residents were so far gone as to be ignorantly blissful in their craziness, others led truly sorrowful, bewildered lives. Our few hours at the nursing home left me with some funny stories—yet everything about Woodhaven seemed tainted with a bit of sadness. When my sister and I were little, we used to love to visit Woodhaven and “help” Aunt Barb “babysit” the older people. We came home full of talk about the odd behavior of the residents without really seeing the sad side to it. We tended to hesitate, however, in getting too close to many of the folks—their hard, bony, and sometimes amazingly strong grip scared us a little, and we shrank from the strange odors about them. But this time, seeing their mundane and often-painful lives—full of emptiness and dominated by confusion—I felt a willingness and even a want to touch them, to get through the wall of their senility, and let them know that they are loved.