The Stranger

    “Help Wanted – Will Train” caught my eye.  Upon closer investigation of the smaller ad font, I discovered that it was for a Nurses Aide position at the nursing home uptown.  “No experience necessary.”  I hadn’t been in the habit of reading the Chippewa Lake Tribune, nor was I seriously looking for a job. After all, I was farming with Dad, but we all knew that was only temporary - at least I knew that.  The words ‘Will Train’ intrigued me enough to pick up the phone and schedule an interview.  Tomorrow at 1:15.

    “It pays a dollar sixty per hour and isn’t glamorous,” the Director of Nursing Services warned.   “It involves wiping a lot of butts,” she said peering over her readers just before taking a deep drag off the cigarette pursed between her ruby lips.  She continued, talking fast while holding her breath, placing the smoldering stick in her desk-top ashtray. “If you think you’ve got what it takes – the job is yours,” she managed to get out before resembling a radiator releasing steam as she exhaled a cloud of smoke forced over her shoulder.

    “You must know my daughter Sally.”

    “Yes, I think she was a grade ahead of me.”

    “How old are you?”

    “Eighteen.”

    “You aren’t in college, Keith.  What are your goals?”

    Goals - do I have any goals?

    Her five-line phone rang and I was spared from answering the difficult question.

    My palms were still sweaty as I slipped a dime into the lobby telephone to make an appointment for a physical examination at the clinic next door. 

    “Dr. Troyer has an opening at ten minutes to four this afternoon, can you make it?” 

    “Sure, I’ll be there.” My voice trembled in response.

    As instructed, I purchased a pair of pants, a smock with pockets and a brand new pair of squeaky-clean tennis shoes at Sears and Roebuck.   Seeing my reflection in the dressing-room mirror made me proud - I looked like a professional dressed in white head to toe.  By the time I got home from the interview, I had my uniform, physician clearance and a job. Someone had actually hired me.  Me!

    Just before five o’clock, I called the Director of Nursing Services declaring, “I can start tomorrow. . .I mean, if that’s okay...”

    “Come in at two-thirty and we’ll get your paperwork started - bring your physical and wear your uniform.  You’ll start at three.  I’m counting on you to show up now.” 

    “Good bye.  See you tomorrow.”

    I tried not to take the negativity personally.  But it did make me nervous that already she was assuming I might be not be up for the job or be some kind of flake.  I was going to have to prove myself to her.

    The following day, I arrived at ten minutes after two.  I met with the Office Manager who promised that I’d net fifty dollars a week.  My hands were shaking as I signed the new-employee documents.  The Office Manager introduced me to the evening Charge Nurse and I listened to the change of shift report, trying my best not to sweat too much.  I was assigned to shadow Betsy, a girl who had been a couple of years behind me at Land-O-Lakes High where On Wisconsin was sung at every pep rally.  I would later learn that Betsy, who was between her junior and senior years, had only been there for four weeks herself.  As she was introducing me to the Two-East Wing, I heard someone scream what sounded like, “Jimmy, Carl, Franny, Annannanananaananaananananananan-anana. . .”

    “What was that?”  I asked a bit startled.

    “What was what?” Betsy answered with a bewildered look on her face.

    “That screaming...”

    “Oh that’s Leona, don’t pay any attention to her. . .”

    I am not sure if it was because I had specifically asked about her or not, but Miss Leona Johnson was the first patient assigned to me.  I read her History and Physical discovering that she had been living in the nursing home for more than five years and was admitted with a diagnosis of Organic Brain Syndrome. I hadn’t a clue as to what that meant, but it sounded serious.  When I met Miss Johnson, the disease had progressed through most of her brain, leaving her extremely impaired.  It had affected her language skills to the point that she was incoherent often making sounds that weren’t words.  She was incontinent of her urine and bowels. She had forgotten how to feed herself or perform any of the self-care tasks and daily routines that we all take for granted. 

    “She’s like a newborn baby,” Besty explained.  I remember thinking, but she’s not a baby - she has lived for over seventy years.

    I read in the Social Services section of her Medical Record that Leona had been a grade school teacher.  She had taught in several one-room country schools in the county; perhaps even Walt Whitman, the one I had attended.  I loved my teacher, Mrs. Olson, who taught me for the first four years in the room that housed grades one through four.  I could not imagine Miss Johnson being a school teacher.  In fact, my first impression upon meeting Miss Johnson was that I wondered if she had been impaired like this her whole life.  There would be times when she would yell out what sounded like they might be names that I imagine could have been a roll call but would soon turn to gibberish.  “Johnny, Frannyannyannyannyannyannyannyanny. . .” she would loudly yell before drifting off to a barely audible whisper.  It would take all the strength she could muster and physically wear her out.  Miss Johnson lived in a haze.  Deep in a space that no one could reach into.  Buried alive in a grave so deep that she couldn’t reach out.  A woman who taught dozens, if not hundreds, of children the three-R’s, no longer responded to her own name.  

    No matter how loving and caring I was, as a member of the team who tended to her, I remained a stranger.  I was the stranger who would give her a gentle kiss on her wrinkled brow as I would awaken her from sleep. 

    “Good morning Leona.  Leona, can you open your eyes?  I am going to help you get ready for breakfast, Leona.  Leona, are you hungry this morning?”

    I was a stranger who knew that no matter what I said, perhaps the only word that struck any kind of familiar chord with her was ‘Leona.’ My awkward communication attempt and repeating her name in every sentence made about as much sense as her unintelligible roll-call.  At first I struggled with if I should call this school teacher by her first name as my peers all did, or address her as Miss Johnson like she was accustomed to hearing from her students.  I then learned that one of her roommates was named Mabel Johnson who would answer to Miss Johnson upon hearing it spoken.   So it was settled, I’d call her Leona.  

    But, I remained a stranger to her.

    A stranger who removed her soiled diaper and gave her a bed bath every morning. 

    A stranger who took dentures from a cup filled with tap water and gingerly slipped them into her dry mouth trying not to gag her. 

    A stranger who lifted her from bed to wheelchair. 

    A stranger who gently combed her snow-white, wispy hair into a ponytail, twisted it into a bun, and secured it with pins to the back of her head.

    A stranger who rubbed a moisturizing cream into her winkled face.

    A stranger who slipped a borrowed sweater atop a fresh hospital gown and tucked a hand-crocheted robe over her bare legs.

    A stranger who pulled a pair of socks on her cold, blue feet trying to pass over her yellow brittle toenails without them snagging. 

    A stranger who laid a pair of glasses on the bridge of her petite nose and rested the bent bows on her ears. 

    A stranger who wheeled her out to the eating area in the Two-East lobby. 

    A stranger who tried to make conversation with a stranger as if this stranger was not stricken by disease.

    Leona had a brother,  a retired dentist from Chicago, who would make the drive with his wife up to Wisconsin’s north woods once or twice a summer.  I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for Dr. Johnson to see his baby sister in this condition.  He would sit in front of her and loudly beg, “Leona, who made your teeth?”  Of course Miss Johnson could not answer, so he would repeat it again, a little louder. “Leona, who made your teeth?”  After several futile attempts he would retreat and brush the tears from his reddened cheeks.  He and his wife would sit there mostly in silence for approximately twenty to thirty long and presumably awkward minutes before heading back to their cabin on the lake.  Strangers saying so-long to the stranger that they once knew.

    Leona was the owner of only a few possessions.  She owned an old pair of scratched lenses in melon-colored frames that probably felt strange to her eyes which she rarely opened.  She owned a set of false teeth, uppers and lowers, that did not fit her shrunken mouth and often dropped out of place.  And, one dress.  This dress was the sole personal item that hung on the lone wire hanger in her closet, all the rest of her daily attire was borrowed from the central-stock of used clothing donated by the families of patients who had died.  The lap-robe came from the bin known as the Mennonite Bin; it housed dozens of handmade lap-robes donated by women from the Mennonite Church.  Leona’s dress was black with black sequins and obviously several sizes too large for her small frail frame of bones and hanging flesh.  It was a gown that gave a clue to the past.  A clue to the stranger who once wore this fancy outfit.  There was a wrinkled note pinned to it.  The note read, “4-1-1969  This dress is only to be worn by Miss Leona Johnson in the event of her death.  Dr. A. H. Johnson, DDS - Chicago, Ill.” 

    I would love to have known the Leona who lived in her body before disease ravaged through her brain destroying her intrinsic awareness of self.  It turned her into a stranger to herself and everyone she would encounter.  There was a clue that this stranger named Leona gave about her former self; on very rare occasions she would pat my arm when I sat feeding her.  I would like to believe she was showing affection and gratitude to me, a stranger, for helping her. My assumption was accolade enough.  But as intimate as our contact was, we remained strangers. 

    The former schoolmarm never grasped the impact that she had on me.  Even with all of her impairments bared, she was my teacher.  I practiced my skills on her.  She helped me realize that I did have a talent and passion for caregiving.  She taught me that I could make a difference.  I’d never engineer a plan to build a bridge to span the Golden Gate – but I could have an impact on people, one person at a time.    She helped me realize my mission and purpose. She gave me a goal.  I believe that there are no accidents in life.  Leona and I were supposed to meet at that specific time in our individual lives.  We were destined to remain strangers. 

    Our modern-day culture values and celebrates the vitality of youth.  We pay young athletes millions of dollars to entertain us.  The same goes for actors who get nipped,  tucked and plumped in order to stay youthful and make millions of dollars for doing so.  They represent our society’s role models - who we are supposed to long to be like.  The rich and famous, often notorious. Teachers, caregivers and human-service workers receive little praise, appreciation or encouragement.  Our efforts are not valued.  We work at the bottom of the pay scales and are often asked to volunteer our time and talents.  But, folks like Leona and me receive gratification from knowing we are in the soul-touching business.  We are blessed with opportunities to make a difference.  Despite more than a fifty-year age gap, Leona and I were peers. 

    Peers who never really met.

    Eventually Leona’s heart beat its last beat.  A black sequined dress, a set of upper and lower porcelain teeth and melon-colored frames with scratched lenses accompanied this pale, lifeless stranger to the Beaver Falls Mortuary.  Leona never knew me, and I never knew her.    But I’d like to believe that we were both better off because our paths crossed and our souls connected. 

    So there you have it, Miss Leona Johnson was the stranger I never knew, who changed my life.

“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” I Peter 4:10

Whenever I write anything about patients I've known from a senior living community such as "Leona" in the story above, I've changed names and a few circumstances to protect the identity and privacy of all involved.