Now That's Power

...It’s been awhile. Long story short. I missed a day. One day turned into three.

My bad.

So let’s talk about today:

We’d moved this lady and her son several times. Due to her deteriorating dementia we had to move her Memory care, while moving her her son, who is on the spectrum, to his own apartment.

Here’s the thing that sad.

Sometimes, I think to ask the family, what did this person do in their professional life?

You see, in this niche that Jake and I now work in, we’re seeing folks towards the end of their run. We’ve moved people from the homes they’ve lived in for years. The home they bought before starting a family or raised their family over the years.

The home they came home to everyday after work. The home where they ate, relaxed, made love in, and lounged in front of the tv, with their significant other. Memories are forged, some bad, but mostly good.

It’s the home, I assume, they’ll die peacefully in their sleep; the mortgage paid and some of their belongings fussed over by their kids.

Well, that doesn’t happen. A spouse dies and our clients live on, slowly watching their life slip away. Try as they might, their health declines, they wither away slowly. Then, something happens -- a fall or the dam breaks on a medical condition that’s been lingering for years.

And now the kids, if they’re lucky, have to make the hard decision to put them in home, depending on their condition.

That’s what happened to our client today. When we first moved her, she was going into independent living. She had a good professional life, some sort of analyst for a pharmaceutical company, so she made mad cash.

Still, she moved from her big house to a two bedroom apartment and the first wave of her stuff had to go, but she kept a vast majority of it.

Then, the dam broke. Actually it was starting to show fissures when we first moved her. It was only a matter of time, when the second move came and this time, she had to move to a smaller space with better care. Then came the second purging came.

But she got a storage facility, which is weird, because it rare - thought we’ve seen it happen - that people get their stuff back.

Not this time. This time, we had to whittle away more of her stuff as she moving into a studio apartment. Gone were her kitchen, she hadn’t cooked for herself in years. Gone was some of the other pieces of furniture that adorned her house. Gone were some of the large professionally done picture frames with her once young family.

We moved a few pieces to help make feel at home, but it paled into comparison to that first move.

Sad to say, most of the stuff we took, she’ll most likely forget by tomorrow.

There’s this haunting moment I’ve come accustomed to in this business. It’s when a person is moved into memory care. Most places that have a memory care have a code, known by staff, to leave the area.

It’s a life sentence with old re-runs and the occasional sing-a-long.

Today, I’d asked one of the family members, that perhaps it would be better if our client waited to be moved in memory care. For her safety while we moved.

He agreed. And in my head, I had this distinct thought: in that moment, by some weird decree, by virtue of me moving her stuff, I’d consigned this lady to the place she’d most likely end her storied life.

That haunting memory of today was there was this one picture of this lady. She’s in front of this beautiful adobe house, sitting in some sports car. She youngish, forties maybe. Her hair is done up and her make up is on point. I felt like she owned the car or that it was her dream purchase.

That car is probably languishing in some junkyard now.

The last I saw of the picture, it was being put on a trailer at the Salvation Army.

I asked to put that lady in memory care today. Never could I imagine that I could wield that sort of power over a person, but today I did.

Juxtapose that with moving her son into a brand new apartment, but I couldn’t help but think of him. From my understanding, he had lived his whole life with his mother, but now, he couldn’t. He’s an older man and what I would consider a fully functioning adult, but with severe limitations.

How is he going to make a living? Pay his bills? How is he going to go to the store without a car?

I don’t know where I’m going with this, only that, I need to be grateful for the now.

I don’t know where and how my story will end.

If there’s any justice in the world, one day, I will pick up something random I’d picked up along the way, carrying it with all the care I can muster, and be escorted to a door that I won’t be able to exit.