The Deserted Bench

 

One of the saddest things we witness in our third age is disappearance of familiar faces of friends, neighbors, acquaintences. Some die, some go for an assisted living facility, some move closer to their children.

 There's a certain bench which whenever I happen to pass near it, I feel a twinge. It reminds me of two women, neigbours and friends, that regularly used to sit on it talking, gossiping, laughing. Sometimes, I would join them as they were a good source of the latest news in the area.

One of them died a few years ago; after that, the other one was not seen again sitting on that bench .  She recently moved to an assisted living facility. She didn't want to. At her age (80) she was still in good condition and quite independent.

However, a divorced brother of hers who had to leave his apartment to wife and kids, came to live at her big house. She was not happy about that. After three years of having him around, she decided to sell the house. She gave him some money to find himself a place, and joined an assisted living facility.

She couldn't believe it. Leaving her house, turned out to be one of her most happy days. 

A Voice in the Night

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Middle of the night. I got awaken from my sleep by a woman's voice repeatedly calling (in hebrew): 'where are you' , 'where are you'.
It was creepy. I had no idea where exactly the voice came from: the street? the garden?the adjacent parking lot? it sounded like a voice coming from an alien world. 

After a few minutes, it occured to me that, perhaps, the voice belonged to a woman with dementia or alzheimer who had escaped, unnoticed from the nearby assisted-living facility (which has also a memory care wing), and was looking for her personal carer. I decided to call the police in our area  and ask them to urgently deal with the matter.

The police were quick. I looked out of the window and was relieved to see the blue flashing light of their car .   After about 5 minutes the nagging voice stopped, and I went back to bed.

The next day I made enquiries. She was found sitting on the garden stone edge, behind a car. It appeared I was only partially right. The woman had indeed dementia, but she wasn't a resident of the assisted living facility.  The police kept her for a while at the station until  family phoned to report her missing. The incident was brought to the attention of the Social Services.

Well, I was glad that it all ended  with no physical harm done to the poor woman. 

*- web picture - logo of dementia campaign