In this story, Allen Tacke tells about an elderly woman he met and came to know over time, and how their lives touched in a very meaningful way.
Margaret was not in a very good mood the first time I went in to see her. In fact, she was rarely in a good mood when I came to see her in the three years following that first visit. Working as a mental health counselor in nursing homes requires many things, and one of them is the ability to not be put off by a client when they are reluctant to see you. So, with Margaret, I persisted.
She was a tiny, frail woman with a misshapen back and neck that caused a large curve in her spine and forced her head to jut forward so that her chin nearly touched her chest. She was in constant pain due to severe arthritis and many other reasons. She was also a constant pain and annoyance to the staff in the nursing home because she was a hoarder. Her room was stacked with papers and newspapers, envelopes and junk mail and boxes of cookies and crackers. She reportedly threw a fit each time one of the nursing home staff tried to clean her room. She often refused to bathe, and her hair always looked flat and oily. She was constantly complaining about the food and resisted working with the physical therapy and rehabilitation program.
This type of person was no longer an obstacle for me at this point in my career. I had discovered the one thing that nearly all people crave in their life. When they have this one thing it makes them feel so much better. This magical thing is called Warmth. Not warmth of the physical kind but human warmth that comes with love, care and endearment. I also discovered that not only does everyone want to receive this vital substance, but they also want to give it.
It didn’t take long for Margaret to warm up to me and me to her. Even though she would often shake her head “no” and refuse to talk as I entered the room, I would persist and soon she was smiling, animated and fully engaged in conversation. Another thing that I had discovered in my work in the nursing homes is that when everything has been stripped away from a person—their home, most of their possessions, their health, their ability to decide things for themselves, their independence and their freedom—when all that has been taken from them, the one thing that they still have is their story. So I began to ask her many questions about her life and soon discovered that she was an excellent storyteller.
Margaret's Story
She was born in a small mining town in Minnesota, and as she spoke I began to see in my mind, her family, their home, the orchestra in which she played and the countryside around her home. She had never married and soon after she graduated from high school she struck out on her own and found work as an administrative assistant for a contractor in Southern California. She lived in an apartment that was right on the beach of the Pacific Ocean. She told many stories of how this contractor had built hundreds of homes in the area and also had built race tracks and had horses of his own.
Margaret loved to travel and took many trips around the country. Her style was to simply get on a bus or train, head to a
destination and allow all of the rest of the trip to unfold once she arrived. She spoke in great detail about the boarding houses and hotels where she had stayed, the cities and the countryside, and her eyes seemed to glow in the telling. She also proved to be a very good listener. She asked me many questions about my life, where I grew up, and about my family. Every time I took a trip, she wanted to hear every detail, and she proved over and over again that she kept all of these details of my own life in her memory as she would call them forward and ask more questions about them later.
There was a time when Margaret became very restless at night and was unable to sleep. In the early hours of the morning she would be out in the hallways and would find a couch or a chair to sleep in for the rest of the evening. The staff reported this to me as it became more of a problem for them. “You can’t have residents sleeping on the couch in the hallway like they are a homeless person!” They considered this another one of Margaret’s “behavior problems” and wanted me to fix it.
There is a great wisdom that can be found in working with others and this wisdom is a great tool for helping both children and adults. It can be summed up in three words: “Behavior is communication.” (I learned this from my wife who treats children and adults suffering from neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD and Autism.)
Keeping this wisdom in mind, I asked Margaret about this problem of her sleeping in the hallways.
She became defensive and angry and began complaining about the staff. I tried a different approach and asked her how she slept before she moved to the nursing home. It turned out that for several years before being admitted, she had not slept in a bed at all, but in a recliner instead. She explained how a recliner did not cause her so much pain in her back and that sleeping in the bed she had now was torture for her. Unfortunately, most of her belongings were thrown away when she did not return to her apartment, which is typically what happens to people who are not able to take care of themselves and have no family or friends who can assist them. I asked her if she had a recliner in her room now, if she would she prefer that to a bed. Her eyes lit up and indicated that this would be much more preferred.
Every nursing home has at least one or two nurses working there that are best described as “salt of the earth” types of people. Managers and administrators may come and go, but these types of nurses have usually been there for many years, are surprised at nothing and very capable of handling most any situation that might arise. Lauren was one of those nurses and she worked on Margaret’s unit. I told her about my conversation with Margaret, and within less than a week she had located a used recliner that had been sitting in storage, left by someone who had recently died. The following week Margaret had stopped wandering the halls at night and was sleeping soundly in her recliner instead of her bed.
One day, I came to the nursing home and discovered that Margaret had been hospitalized. They reported that she was suffering from delusions because of her medical condition and refused to come back. The hospital eventually placed her into another nursing home on the other side of the city. I knew that nursing home well and this worried me, because it was often understaffed, run down, chaotic and not a very friendly place to live. Reluctantly, I transferred her case to a co-worker who was working in that nursing home and thought I might never see Margaret again. Something inside of me was bothered by this, and had I not been so busy at work I would have gone to see her while she was in the hospital.
A couple of weeks later I was delighted to find out that Margaret had transferred back to her old nursing home. The first person I visited that day was her, and when I entered her room she sat up and cried out “Where were you?!!” She began to cry and said she could not understand why I had not come to see her. She soon calmed down and we had a delightful visit. At the end, as I was leaving the room she looked at me and said, “Allen, you are the light of my life!”
The subject of death had come up in our conversations a number of times during the years that I saw Margaret. She often had dreams of being in the nursing home and seeing bodies carted out on gurneys. She actually did see this one morning, shortly after she had begun living there. She was in her wheelchair in the hallway in the back by the freight elevator. The elevator doors opened and there was a gurney with a body on it, covered in a sheet, and they were taking it out to the back door. This experience became the source of a recurring dream for the next four years.
“The next time I leave this place it is going to be on a gurney,” she used to say to me. The idea of death was frightening to her, so I gently approached the subject with her several times. As a counselor working with people who are approaching their final days, it is part of my job to help ease away the fears of dying. We talked through her thoughts and feelings about it and then she would ask me about mine. In the end I assured her that my belief was that she was going to be pleasantly surprised after her body dies and that after some initial stages of confusion, she would find herself taken up and surrounded with love and warmth and care. At this she appeared surprised and would say, “I hope you are right!”
As time passed my visits became a little more frequent. Margaret was failing in health and began to treasure every moment that we could spend together. In the beginning, I visited her once every two or three weeks, but now was seeing her on a weekly basis. One day I entered her room and approached her bed. She struggled to open her eyes, and when she saw me she closed them, shook her head and told me to go away. It was late in the afternoon and I knew that I should have persisted, but I told her goodbye and went on with my busy day.
The following week I came to see her again. This time she looked gaunt and frail, her eyes were sunken and I was very startled by her condition. I called out to her and she struggled to open her eyes. Seeing it was me, she closed them and shook her head. I told her that I wasn’t going to leave this time and that I wished she would let me stay. She reluctantly agreed and we began to talk. She had not eaten for three days and she said that she felt she was dying. She appeared as if she was frustrated and disappointed in herself and said, “I’m such an idiot, I don’t even know how to die properly. Can you help me?”
I assured her that all was well and that if she was dying, then to simply let it happen in its own way and timing. I reminded her that there was nothing to fear and that she would be very happy once she was free of her body, free of pain and able to go home again. She smiled and said, “I knew that is what you were going to tell me. It sounds so good coming from you. I hope you are right.”
Knowing that she was basically all alone, without family or friends, I held her hand and told her what a wonderful person she was. “I’m thinking my life has been a waste,” she said. I responded by reminding her of the many wonderful things that we had talked about over the years, how I now held all these things in my mind and in my heart, and because of this I KNEW that her life was not a waste. “Margaret,” I said, “you are a beautiful soul and there is nothing you can say to convince me otherwise because I have seen you, and I see you now.”
I noticed a calendar on her wall of beautiful photos of birds. She remembered that my favorite bird is the Meadowlark, and she reminded me of this. “You know, I have never seen a meadowlark and I have always longed to,” she said. It occurred to me that I could possibly find a video of a meadowlark on my phone. I pulled one up and clicked “play”, held it right up to her face so she could see it and the sweet, beautiful melody of a meadowlark singing began to fill the room. I played it several times and she was delighted. “Now you’ve heard the Meadowlark sing,” I said.
When I told her I was preparing to leave, I said I would be back in a week. “Oh no, don’t wait that long, I’ll be gone by then,” she said. After some consideration I told her that I would try to stop by to see her earlier. “I will be waiting for you,” she said. That next week turned out to be extremely busy, hectic and stressful. Monday and Tuesday rolled by. On Wednesday I thought of calling the nursing home to check in on her but then thought to myself, “Well, I will be there tomorrow, so I will just wait until then.”
Thursday came and I entered the nursing home and went up to the second floor to check in on Margaret. The nursing staff was in a jovial mood, and they had a number of boxes of crackers and cookies at the nursing station. With gleeful humor they were wondering if they should risk opening the boxes or would they perhaps be contaminated. Perhaps they could give them to the Activities department?
I knew then and there that they were talking about Margaret’s personal belongings and that she had already died. The staff was definitely glad to finally be rid of her, as she had been a pain in their side for over four years and their mood was jolly. It hit me very hard. They told me that indeed she had died on Wednesday. I cussed and blurted out that I had promised to see her before she passed. One of the nurses who was very kind told me that she had passed peacefully, but I was not easily consoled. I wished that I hadn’t broken my promise to her.
Quickly I regained my composure, and told myself that my reaction was not doing myself or Margaret any good. I knew that she was now in very good hands and that it was okay for me to feel sadness and grief, but that the guilt was simply a poison best left behind. I realized how much I actually loved Margaret and how fortunate I was that she loved me and that this was all that was important.
Later that day I entered Margaret’s room. Her roommate was there in the first bed and the curtains were drawn to conceal what had been Margaret’s side of the room. I entered that side of the room and it was already completely empty. All of her personal items had been removed.
I paused and thought of Margaret. I called to her in my mind and began to think of the many wonderful times we had spent together. Things became very still, and I could feel her presence there. My hands began to tingle with a vibrant energy and the room became bright. I wished her a safe journey and said goodbye. Then I reached into my pocket, took out my phone and played for her the song of the Meadowlark one last time.
Note: Names in this story have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.
"The Meadowlark" is an excerpt from Allen's book, What Passes Between Us?
What did you think?
Please send us your comments via our contact form.
If you appreciated this story, you may also want to visit our Music page to listen to Allen's song "A Simple Man's Prayer", along with other music.