As life expectancy increases, knowing how to interact with the world as your faculties slowly degrade becomes difficult and very lonely. So many people who have known a loved one fading away in a nursing home may be familiar with the gnawing guilt of not visiting more often. The conditions of modern nursing homes aside, we are still learning how to maintain relationships with human beings who are nearing the end of life. Even caregivers struggle to remember the humanity within an older person who can no longer follow social cues as expected. One nurse found something extraordinary to reinvigorate the mission of caregivers and family members of cultivating the patience to look right into the soul of someone who knows he is slowly being forgotten.
When Mak Filiser died alone in a geriatric ward, it was assumed he left behind nothing of value. When cleaning out his room, one woman found a poem he had written that would remind her and her staff of the truer focus of their mission as caregivers for the dying elderly.
The poem titled “Cranky Old Man” begins with a series of questions to his caregivers: “What do you see nurses? What are you thinking…when you’re looking at me? A cranky old man…not very wise, Uncertain of habit…with faraway eyes? Who dribbles his food…and makes no reply. When you say in a loud voice…’I do wish you’d try!’ Who seems not to notice… the things that you do.”
He continues to describe the task of “dealing with” his inability to care for himself with such clarity of what, surely, his nurses were thinking. He writes on, “…And forever is losing…A sock or shoe? Who, resisting or not…lets you do as you will, With bathing and feeding…The long day to fill? Is that what you’re thinking? Is that what you see? Then open your eyes, nurse…you’re not looking at me.” He’ll tell you what you’re not seeing – keep reading!
His poem promises to reveal what his silence hides. The poem reads, “I’ll tell you who I am . . . . .. As I sit here so still, As I do at your bidding…as I eat at your will. I’m a small child of Ten…with a father and mother, Brothers and sisters…who love one another. A young boy of Sixteen…with wings on his feet. Dreaming that soon now…a lover he’ll meet.” He shares feelings to which anyone can relate as if to remind you we’re not so different… and you will be old, someday, wishing people would remember you are a person trapped in this aging body.
The poem continues, “A groom soon at Twenty…my heart gives a leap. Remembering, the vows…that I promised to keep. At Twenty-Five, now…I have young of my own. Who need me to guide…And a secure happy home.” His poem goes on to list the responsibilities of each age as the years pass by staring with, “A man of Thirty…My young now grown fast, Bound to each other…With ties that should last.”
The ages go by as he writes, “At Forty, my young sons…have grown and are gone, But my woman is beside me…to see I don’t mourn. At Fifty, once more…Babies play ’round my knee, Again, we know children…My loved one and me.” But, what will inevitably happen in his story to leave him alone in a nursing home?
Filiser wrote, “Dark days are upon me…My wife is now dead. I look at the future…I shudder with dread. For my young are all rearing…young of their own. And I think of the years…And the love that I’ve known. I’m now an old man…and nature is cruel. It’s jest to make old age…look like a fool.” The death of his wife and children moving on with their lives will remind you that though you may have people in your life now, they may not stay.
He describes the cruelty of aging writing, “The body, it crumbles…grace and vigor, depart. There is now a stone…where I once had a heart. But inside this old carcass a young man still dwells.” And yet, there’s hope…
