Today's Photo

Dropping things off to Emma at the old folks home is never a simple affair.  It isn't just because she is never happy with anything- either it isn't the right brand or the right size or that her neighbor is stealing the toilet paper.  Nor is it because I have to hide snacks and cat food under her bed while she complains about things that she will not let me change. 

Over the last year I have gotten to know many of the women who live there, if one would call that purgatory living.  Although some have dementia or Alzheimer's many of them are quite lucid and sociable.  These ladies are so loving and dear and they are all lonely.  I visit them in the halls or in their rooms where they great me with tons of hugs and kisses and more of the same.  Some don't remember me from visit to visit but never hesitate to grab me and hang on.  Today, Lee, who is 104 looked up into my face with her beautiful, blurry, blue eyes then clung onto my hand as she kissed it, asking who I was. 

It breaks my heart every time I am there knowing that most of these folks have family, many nearby, who don't bother to visit.  Years ago when I volunteered to spend time with home-bound elderly I would find myself in tears after leaving them.  What a fucked-up society we live in where we don't value the wisdom of age and abandon our kin.  All of my elders are dead so it's a privilege for me to be allowed into the hearts of these lovely people.

I have been bringing my camera with me but have been unable to photograph my old ladies because they haven't had their hair done.  So, today I warned them that next time I would come on a Saturday and they wouldn't have an excuse, having had their hair set the day before.

So, I shot the table and chairs outside the home.  When the weather is nicer I am going to shoot Micky out there with her fancy Chinese parasol.  She used to manage a mobile home park in southern California where the inhabitants had nightly cocktails, she is a feisty, little thing!