Invalid
Or
Day
Care Lessons
My name is Virgil Julius Shaw. I was raised in the 9th
ward of New Orleans, Holy Cross neighborhood; I’m now eighty-four years old. Spending
the rest of my life in a nursing facility (which is my current situation) gives
me plenty of time to think; I don’t do my own laundry, cook meals or go out in
public without a chaperone. A far cry from the life that I led and had; to all
intents and purposes, I am now invalid (not an
invalid: invalid: as in not valid anymore). I have a room eight
feet by twenty feet that I share with another invalid; we rarely speak, he
watches television with the sound off and listens to classical music on a
portable radio. I sit and think while I wait for my next meal or for someone to
wheel me out to sit in the sun. It sucks getting old.
You
might say that I had a full life. The usual growing pains to reach adulthood:
playground fist fights; teenage love crushes; hormone riots of confusion and a
broken arm from a bike accident. After graduating school, I joined the military
and participated in the perpetual war that our country is forever involved in;
I learned how to use weapons and was lucky enough to muster out unscathed.
Too young I married the wrong woman who came with a
pretty face, angry pointless arguments, hot make up sex and an inability to
find and keep gainful employment; I spent the majority of that union struggling
to make ends meet and keep a roof over our heads. Nightclubs and carousing was
part of our lifestyle, we lived in a cold water flat at the edge of the French
Quarter and when I wasn’t working we were out spending anything that I made
like we were swells. Eventually I got tired of coming home late and tired to
dirty laundry and sinks full of dishes. There were endless employment
interviews in ironed shirts and shined shoes; I took a succession of jobs that
I hated until I found better ones, just to keep bread on the table. She left me
for a fast talker, became a stripper on Bourbon Street and later married the
drummer in the band.
There were years of drifting; night hawking. Sad rooming
houses, back alley brawls and crap games; three card Monty and cheap whiskey; getting
busted so many times that I knew the desk Sergeant at the precinct by name. Fast
women and slow horses, unreliable sources, being too smart for my own good;
drinking bouts and tobacco lung wrenching coughs and moving back to New Orleans
with my kid sister and her boyfriend until I could lick my wounds and get on my
feet.
I
took a job in the library and found a career to last a lifetime, I fell in love
with and married above my station, took a bunch of evening classes and bought a
house on the G.I. bill; I managed to raise a family and took part in the well
being of my brood. The normal everyday American Dreamer. My wife was a piano
teacher and why she loved me I’ll never know.
We
both retired about the same time, we traveled some; the kids were grown and had
gone off to be whatever they became, I lost one to a drunk driver, the other
two either don’t know where I am or could care less. My wife died ten years ago
and my life went downhill from there.
I
‘downsized’ and moved to a retirement apartment complex. I took a spill down a
flight of steps and the medical costs took a lot of money, they shipped me here
to recover and after six months Medicare took over my living expenses. Then
surprise, surprise; the nursing home took all of my assets and told me that
they had to use them for my expenses, so now I have no apartment, car, any of
my possessions or finances. I talked to the Patient Councilor here and he told
me that he agreed that it was a f**king shame but that it was a legal
technicality that they could exercise; so, tough patooties. He also warned that
if I put up a fuss about it, they could send me to the loony facility up the
road and claim that I needed medication for ‘nervousness’. All of us here just
keep our opinions to ourselves like good inmates do; it’s best to avoid making
waves.
That’s
the extent of my life here, of all of the lives here: rich man; poor man;
beggar man; thief; doctor; lawyer; Indian Chief. Butcher; baker; candlestick
maker; paupers; pirates; poets and the many women here that sacrificed their
lives for love and family. Did I tell you that there are separate wings of this
institution for men and women? We only get to mingle during meal times, not
that it matters to any of us anymore.
Oh, they take care of us here, we’re able to
draw thirty-eight dollars a month to do pretty much anything we want to with
it. The staff performs their duties with an air of semi-professionalism; I can
tell that they’re overworked, underpaid and not especially qualified. Some
bring religion to us, some, I can tell, didn’t realize that, with all their
schooling, they would be changing diapers and giving out medications to a group
of ‘old and in the way’ elders that wake up, spend the day and go back to sleep
feeling impotent and invalid. I’ve tried to point out that they too will be in
here someday; they don’t seem to be impressed by that. Kids these days.
So here I am, we are,
waiting to die because what we have is hardly worth being called living. I’m
Virgil Julius Shaw and this is my thousand words about my life.
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