Helen & Emma: Using Your Natural Talents

Story Six

I met Helen decades ago when I worked at a nursing home in Kittery, Maine. By the time I came along, most of Helen’s words had disappeared. She mainly communicated through gestures, looks, and hard-to-decipher mumbles. Helen believed that I was her granddaughter. I did bear a resemblance to her granddaughter’s photo that she kept on her dresser.

Performing a routine bed check, I would inevitably find that Helen had gotten up at some point and coaxed her body back into the tight-fitting girdle that I had helped her to struggle out of earlier. This scenario was repeated multiple times before Helen would finally fall asleep.

I assumed that this odd routine was something that happened with other aides on the nights when I wasn’t working, but this wasn’t the case. Seemingly, it was a plan hatched by Helen that ensured that we would spend time together after the other residents had gone to sleep.

Staff members’ pens disappeared at an alarming rate on our wing. Although this is not an uncommon fate for pens left unattended in nursing homes, the workers had a strong suspicion that Helen was the culprit. However, no one was ever able to catch her in the act.

One day, at the beginning of my shift, standing at the nursing station where the hallways intersected, I commented that I had forgotten to bring a pen to work. A few minutes later, as I was walking down Helen’s hallway, her head popped out of the doorway.

Waving me into her room, Helen shut the door. She pulled her purse out from its hiding place and looked surreptitiously around the room before she opened it. Her purse was filled with the missing pens. She gestured for me to quickly take one before she snapped her purse shut and returned it to the drawer. I smiled, accepting Helen’s gift. I knew she wouldn’t have parted with one of her precious pens for just anyone.

This week, sitting down to write Helen’s story, I had no idea where it might lead. It began with a desire to share the story of a woman who is gone, and for the most part, forgotten. However, as I began writing, there was one memory that kept pushing its way up to the surface.

It was the memory of a bright blue sweater that hung on a pipe in Helen’s bathroom. I would often find Helen in the bathroom, engaged in a garbled one-way conversation, staring intently at the sweater. It took me a while to understand that Helen believed that the sweater was her daughter.

Fast-forwarding, I overlay this memory onto my granddaughter Emma’s life. Emma is four years old, and due to the pandemic, she has lived a quarter of her life in a relative state of isolation. In December, Emma had to quarantine for fourteen days when her mom, a healthcare worker, tested positive for Covid-19. This was followed by yet another quarantine period when Emma tested positive.

Unfortunately, this all happened during the holidays. Emma was unable to see her cousins, who had quarantined so that they could spend time with her. On top of this, her father lives with a mental illness and is not in a good place.

Like Helen, Emma has found a unique use for an everyday object. Emma pretends that her hollow blocks, made out of folded cardboard, are her cousins. On nights when I stay with her while her mom works, we set the “cousins” on the chairs around her table and have tea parties and birthday celebrations. She even plays a game of hide-and-seek where I hide her “cousins” around the house while Emma covers her eyes and counts.

At bedtime, we put pajamas on cousins Willa and Mason. She brushes Willa’s teeth and follows up with me checking her teeth for “sugar bugs.” Finally, Emma arranges five or six of her cousins on my king-sized bed, saving a spot for the two of us to snuggle up before we all head off to sleep.

Initially, I felt very sad watching Emma pretend that the blocks were her cousins. This was quickly followed by a feeling of apprehension, wondering if it was a sign of emotional difficulties brought on by the pandemic. Then, with a feeling of relief, I recalled Helen, talking to her sweater daughter.

I now know that Helen and Emma both possess (ed) a natural talent for dealing with emotionally trying times. Summoning this inherent gift helps them to stay strong and resilient.

Helen talked to her sweater daughter as a means of coping with her end-of-life challenges. Whereas Emma, at the beginning of her life, invents ways to handle the feelings of isolation and loneliness during a pandemic.

I love and admire you both.

With Love & Energy by the Pond,

Laurel

laurel@energybythepond.com