You Do What for Work?

When I told people I worked in memory care, there was a specific pause before they responded. A reordering of whatever they’d assumed about me. Then: Oh, that must be so hard.

It was hard sometimes. Caring about people means grieving them. That’s just true.

But the hallway was also — and I mean this — funny. There was music and mischief and people with long memories for the things that mattered to them. There was a man who could still recite poetry he’d learned in school sixty years ago. There was a woman who had opinions about every outfit and wasn’t shy about sharing them.

Where I stopped looking and started finding

I had spent years wanting to do something that meant something. I tried to figure out what that was. I made lists. I had conversations. I wondered.

Then I was just there, in a room with people who needed someone to show up and pay attention, and I realized that was the thing. That was the answer I’d been trying to calculate.

Joyfully Elaine grew from that — from a friendship with a woman named Joyce and from what I learned in that hallway. The programs are real, but they’re not the point. The point is the room, and the people in it, and whether anyone makes them feel like they still matter.

They do.