The Widower
A Return Visit with Cheryl's Friends at Huntington
I hesitated going there. Back to Huntington Place, the memory care facility where Cheryl lived for a year until she moved to the Agrace Hospice inpatient complex Feb. 20 and died six days later.
Still, I wanted to visit those people Cheryl lived with, those she connected with, those I counted as her last new friends. So earlier this month, in the late afternoon, I drove to Janesville’s north side and pulled into the parking lot behind Huntington’s building.
Immediately, I noticed a difference. The solid white fences that surrounded two courtyards were gone. The patio furniture remained. I wondered how the staff could control dementia patients prone to wandering in varying directions. The scene reminded me that I never spent any time with Cheryl in those courtyards. She was always cold, but if it was warm enough to coax her outside, we went for walks instead.
Stepping through the first of two doors in the entryway, I hit the buzzer. A staffer quickly opened the second door. Not surprisingly, I didn’t recognize this young woman; she obviously started work in the months since Cheryl left.
She didn’t ask who I was there to see, and with many patients with familiar faces seated around the large activity room just inside, I strolled over and said hello to Nancy and Cathy, two who always sat in that area. I also greeted Leo, seated nearby. Sadly, Cathy’s decline seemed evident. She was thinner, more frail looking. Nancy, however, looked the same.
Cathy wasn’t the only one whose decline seemed obvious. As I headed toward Cheryl’s old room, Arlene, a taller woman who always wandered the halls, said hello.
I asked, “Do you remember me?”
“I think so,” she said hesitantly. I doubted she did.
I chatted with her and Lyn, a pleasant woman who entered Huntington in a wheelchair.
“How are you?” I asked Lyn.
“Oh, not so good,” she said without elaborating.
Fred, a visually impaired patient whose room is next to Lyn’s, heard us talking and rolled his walker into the hall to join us.
Lyn, whose memory is remarkable for someone in such a facility, asked if I was still photographing birds. I told her about my latest find, a prothonotary warbler, which I got a picture of just a week earlier.
A female staffer I recognized walked past. She recognized me, too, and was happy to see me. I guessed at her name but was wrong. She said she was leaving for a different job and had applications at two places, including Agrace. I didn’t think to ask if she’d told the Huntington management she was leaving, so I’ll refer to her here as Janet.
Janet continued down the hall as I wrapped up my birding story. Then, I said, “I need to go say hello to Rita.” Earlier, I thought I saw Rita lying next to a folded wheelchair on the hallway floor around the corner. On my way to that spot, I passed Cheryl’s old room. A woman named Harriet now occupied it. She sat in a chair facing the window. Sylvia, confined to bed the entire time Cheryl lived there, was still next door. I also passed Barb’s room, the door closed. A friend sometimes took Barb to the same church I attend, and Barb smiled and waved when she saw me there. Surprisingly, she always greeted me by name.
“Hi Rita,” I said when I reached her. She looked up and started talking but made little sense. She rolled from her side onto her back and kept talking. I asked if the adjacent wheelchair was hers, and the question confused her.
I reminded her that she and Cheryl were friends before my wife died three months ago. Rita sat up, and I sat on the floor across from her and showed her cellphone photos of the two of them together.
Rita stumbled on the name Janesville while asking how long I’ve lived here. “Since 1987, so about 37 years.”
“Wow,” she said. She asked if my kids lived here, and I told her my son Josh does.
“How old is he?”
“He’s 40. Cheryl’s two sons are about 48 and 50, maybe 49 and 51.”
“Is that your son?” Rita asked, pointing to a painting of a boy near a creek on the wall above my head.
“No, that’s just some boy in the painting,” I said.
We chatted some more, and it saddened me that her confusion seemed even more pronounced than three months earlier, when I’d returned to Huntington to give her five stuffed dogs that went with Cheryl to Agrace. I was certain that Rita, her bed always filled with stuffed dogs, had given Cheryl the largest of the pack, if not all five.
Soon a trio of paramedics approached us, followed by Janet, who pushed a large wheelchair. Rita turned to greet them and bumped her head on the corner of a display shelf mounted to the wall. She rubbed her head as they reached her.
“Did anyone see her fall?” the lead paramedic asked.
“No,” Janet responded. “We just can’t get her off the floor, and she’s always on the floor.”
I’d seen Rita sit on the floor when Cheryl lived at Huntington, and my guess is that she just decided to sit and no longer had the strength to get up. Always carrying extra weight, she seemed even heavier, probably due to less walking, less overall activity.
“Do you hurt anywhere?” the paramedic asked Rita.
She didn’t respond, so I said, “Well, her head hurts from bumping it just now.”
“Are you a relative?” he asked me.
“No. My wife lived here, and Rita was her friend.”
The paramedics struggled to get Rita up, and they sat her in the larger wheelchair. Janet pushed Rita to the activity room, where the others were watching a Disney movie. I joined them and knelt to visit with Ramona, a pleasant woman who arrived in a wheelchair about halfway through Cheryl’s stay. I liked her from the first time I spoke with her, and at times she made me laugh.
“Who are you?” she asked. I told her my name and explained that my wife, Cheryl, lived here but died three months ago.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Thanks.”
After a brief chat, I got up to ask Janet about some of the patients on the other wing. Albert was in his room but appeared to be asleep, so I didn’t bother him. I enjoyed talking with his wife when she visited him.
Janet told me that Sally, our former neighbor, was doing better. During Cheryl’s time at Huntington, Sally was a recluse, refusing to leave her room. But Sally’s son said she needed to get out, so she had been.
I asked Janet why the courtyard fences were missing.
“Oh, they’re replacing those. The new ones will be 12 feet high.”
“What, so the patients stop climbing over them?” I said with a laugh, remembering how the 6-foot walls seemed plenty high to keep patients corralled.
As Janet stood up to tend to a patient, I asked to be let out.
“Thanks for coming,” she said. “You’re always welcome here. Come back any time.”
“Thanks,” I said, while thinking I was stepping out those double doors for the very last time.
Greg,
I can see where a trip back to the facility could be very difficult as patients memories change daily and new patients come and go constantly. It is a telling sign of the disease itself. Even the staff deals with so many new people it’s hard to keep residents names straight after several months. A very challenging meeting.
It must have been very difficult to go back there. Cudos to you!