A Life Fuller Still

Sunny Isles Nursing Home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, had 98 patients. Sea Breeze nursing home, one block north of Sunny Isles, had 96. These nursing homes specialized in the “old old”; people over the age of 85 who had the luxury to die in comfort, but there was nothing comfortable about dying. Working there was depressing. Living there was worse than depressing – at least for most.

            The residents of these nursing homes were the “lucky ones”. These were the people that didn’t die in a car accident when they were 28; didn’t die of breast or prostate cancer at 39; didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke at 55. They skipped all of that and attended a hundred funerals during their lifetime. These were life’s survivors. Like everybody else they still had to die - they just took their time doing it. The average resident lasted 2 years before checking out for the “Big Move” as both the residents and the staff called it.

            Most residents of Sunny Isles and Sea Breeze, like most people, were boring and uninteresting. Their minds and their physical senses were dulled by age. But every once in a while a “live wire” would arrive and take up residency. People whose health had failed but whose mind had not. There were two such residents at the homes now – a 95-year-old man at Sunny Isles and an 85-year-old woman at Sea Breeze. Though these two residents were both terminal you would never know it by talking with them.

Registered Nurses Emmanuel and Sherry both worked as a “primary”, an individual tasked with the primary care of the residents, and had been assigned to each live wire: Emmanuel for the male resident, Pete, and Sherry for the female resident, Maria. Emmanuel and Sherry were “survivors”, that is, they were “primaries” that had been able to last on the job. Watching over people that had come to finish out their lives and die is no dream job – but somebody has got to do it. 

“Hey Sherry!” said Emanuel as he stepped into the pizza shop that served the neighborhood.

“Hey Manny!” Sherry replied. “How’s it going?”

 The two primaries were on very friendly terms and often chatted during their lunch break at one of the several restaurants that operated in the neighborhood.

“It’s going,” said Emmanuel, tilting his head over his left shoulder slightly and smiling sheepishly. “I don’t know where it’s going… but it’s going.”

Sherry smiled knowingly.

“It could be worse,” Emmanuel continued. “I got a “foxy grandpa” who is also a very “live wire”.

A “foxy grandpa” was a term used to describe male residents that still appeared to be interested in sex. Some years back the term was lifted by a primary at Sunny Isles from Kurt Vonnegut’s short story, “Welcome to the Monkey House”, and the term stuck.

“A foxy grandpa! My favorite!” Sherry said sarcastically.

“This one is a bit different. He’s not a lecher. He’s quite the philosopher.”

“What’s his status?”
“He arrived just yesterday, but already he’s got me thinking. He’s 95 and has early stage liver cancer,” said Emmanuel. “He refused surgery and chemo. He figures he’s got 6 to 18 months and is rather amused by the physicians that try to convince him to have surgery. He asks them, ‘After the surgery, chemo and recovery… will I be young again?’ Then he laughs hysterically and says, ‘Doc, I’m 95. I’m just humoring you. There is nothing you guys can do for a man my age except tell me a good joke and sneak in a bottle of good whiskey. A man my age should not die sober and it would be really something to die laughing - especially in this joint.’ The guy has steel in his balls.”

            Emmanuel grinned at his fellow primary and friend and shook his head, full of admiration for his charge.

“What about you?” he asked Sherry.

            “Oh, I’ve got a “Matron”. She lived here in South Florida from Junior High until several years after college then returned to her native Argentina. Her children all moved to the U.S. after they graduated high school so she moved back to be near them. She’s been a widow for over 30 years.”

            Emmanuel shook his head.  A “Matron” was an inside term for a socially opinionated but educated woman, usually one who sees her rank as above those caring for her.  “Matron’s can be tough,” he said.

            “She’s actually very pleasant and seems to naturally be a genuinely happy person.”

“What kind of “Matron” is genuinely happy?” Asked Emmanuel.
“This one is. Maybe she is not a perfect Matron, but I think her

Worldview is rigid enough to qualify. She’s just nicer than most.”

“Good morning, Pete!” Emmanuel beamed as he entered Pete’s room early the next morning. “How you feeling?”

“Well, I woke up this morning. I guess not many get out so easy,” Pete said as he spread his hands in an all-encompassing gesture.

“Why you in a hurry to get out of here?” asked Emmanuel. “You just got here.”

“I didn’t mean here as in this place. I meant life,” responded Pete. “Every morning that I wake up is a bit of a surprise. Every night I wonder if this will be the night I don’t wake up from.”

“Don’t be so morbid,” said Emmanuel as he brought a breakfast tray into the room from the hall.

“Who is being morbid? I loved every minute of my life. Even this minute, right here, as a broken old man. I am dying, but I am remembering the beautiful and happy moments of my life,” Pete said smiling at Emmanuel as if they were at a ball game’s 7^th inning stretch.

“Wow. That’s some spirit you have there, Pete.”

“You think so?” Pete paused and thought for a minute before continuing. “Nah. I was just luckier than most on several accounts. Not only did I live a long and healthy life but I recognized, even as a young man, that my life would end – that it was ending one minute at a time – and that I should live and love every moment that the opportunity presented itself. I have lots of regrets, but almost none for the opportunities and pleasures that I didn’t take.”

Emmanuel stopped and looked at Pete. Pete met his gaze with a contented smile.

“Well, I have been over your chart. You don’t take any medications, so I know this isn’t drugs talking,” said Emmanuel as he pulled up a chair from the desk.

“No, this isn’t a drug or drugs talking. It’s just a guy who has lived long and enjoyed - and didn’t waste the moments of his life standing on ceremony or complying with convention just because everybody else did it that way. I have known the love of many beautiful women, traveled the world, worked when I had to, and played when I should have. And I lived my life that way because in the back of my mind I always knew I would wind up here – as a broken old man lying in a bed waiting to die and able to do nothing but remember. So I gave myself lots of good memories to keep me company. I understand why so many old people are so grumpy and unhappy. They did not live and love when they could have and should have and it is only now, at the very end of their lives, that they realize that that time has passed and will never come again.”

Emmanuel continued to meet Pete’s gaze after Pete finished talking. Though a dying man, Pete’s face was as calm and happy as a statue of the Buddha. Emmanuel smiled back, dropped his gaze and shook his head slowly taking it all in.

“You must have had some life to sustain you like this,” Emmanuel said quietly.

“I had all of the ups and downs that life can bring. All of my brothers and sisters are gone, as are all of my childhood friends. I buried two wives. My children are between 30 and 65 and have their own lives and problems. As the saying goes, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Rich is better.” I’ve enjoyed excellent health, but I lost that a couple of times long enough to get my attention.”

“You were married twice?”

“Three times. The first time I was in my twenties and it ended in divorce in my 30’s. Beautiful girl. She died years ago. Married again in my 40’s, she passed away when I was 58. I married again when I was 65 to a girl 30 years younger than me. She passed away 15 years ago at the age of 50. Everyone thought she would be babysitting me in my old age and as it turned out I cared for her until the bitter end. At my age I am literally the last man standing,” Pete said, still with the look of Buddha like contentment on his face. “But you know all of this, working here,” he continued, his friendly gaze still locked on Emmanuel.

“I know a lot of things from working here. Not sure if I know what it is you seem to know.”

“I’m not sure what I know or what’s true. There are a couple of things I am sure of, though… Fun is the best thing to have. Love is the best thing to be in. Hope for better days is the best thing to carry around with you. Everything else is just baggage that weighs you down. Time will put enough bricks in your pockets. You don’t have to put any bricks in there yourself.”

“Fair enough. What’s most important? Fun, Love or Hope?”

“Oh, it’s not even close. Love.”

“So you’ve been in love?”

“Been? Still am.”

Emmanuel looked at Pete with an amused look on his face. “What? You got a girl friend?”

“I wish I had her.”

“Who? Your last wife?”
            “No. A woman I have not seen in 42 years.”

Emmanuel shook his head several times and held up his hand as if asking Pete to stop or slow down.

“Hold on. Come again? You’ve been in love for 42 years?” Their eyes met. Pete was as calm and composed as a Hindu cow. Emmanuel was as lost as Hansel and Gretel.

“No. I have been in love with her for 60 years. I have not seen her in 42 years. There have been a hundred lovers – maybe more - since the last night I spent with her. No one has come close to moving me the way she did. She would be 85 now, that is, if she were still alive. If she is, I would do anything to see her again.”

“Hi, Sherry!” Maria said from her bed as Sherry entered Maria’s room at the Sea Breeze Home for assisted living.

“Hi, Maria! You seem rather chipper this morning!”

“Chipper? What is chipper?” asked Maria in her beautifully accented English.

“I’m sorry. I keep forgetting that English is your second language since you speak it so well. “Chipper” means energetic and happy and you sound that way.”

“I think everyone is responsible for their own happiness. So I am happy.” Maria smiled and looked up at Sherry from her bed. Maria was small and frail; her thin grey hair was clipped to the back of her head by a single bobby pin. She had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was here in the hospice program with an expected survival time of 3 to 9 months, but the expression on her face looked more like she was having a visit with a friend’s granddaughter.

“I guess that’s true,” said Sherry.

“There is no other way. If you depend on others for your happiness you will never be happy. Most people cannot find their own happiness. How can they possibly find happiness for you?”

Sherry stopped what she was doing and sat down in the chair facing the Maria’s bed.

“I get the idea that you are not very interested in small talk,” Sherry said to Maria in a quiet but kind voice.

“I’ve been making small talk my whole life. Now that I am dying I feel that I wasted a great deal of time with small talk.”

“Is there something in particular you would like to talk about?”

Maria paused and thought for a minute, and then said “No, not really.” After another pause she continued, “I have lived my life. I would be interested in hearing about your life.”

“What would you like to know?” asked Sherry.

Maria smiled and reached for Sherry’s hand. Sherry reached back and took Maria’s hand. It was small and gnarled with the ravages of age. Sherry looked up at Maria’s smiling face.  She must have been very, very pretty when she was young.

“What would you like to tell me?” Maria said kindly.

Sherry smiled back at Maria, squeezed her hand, and thought What would I like to tell you? Everything.

Emmanuel had been caring for the elderly long enough to know that these are just young people that got old, not old people - there was a big difference. But it was rare to have someone this old with this level of mental acuity. Physically, Pete was little more than a scarecrow. He could still walk and use the bathroom by himself, but not for much longer by the looks of him. Many old people can remember 50 years ago like it was yesterday but can’t seem to remember what they were talking about 5 minutes ago. That was not the case with Pete. He was sharp as a tack.

“You have been in love with a woman you have not seen in decades?”

“Yes.”

“And you had been married twice and had a hundred lovers during those years?”

“Yes,” Pete said with a kind smile. “It is a funny old world, isn’t it?”

“That it is Pete, but what kind of love could it possibly have been? You were able to love others, weren’t you?”

“Are you that much of a cynic, Emmanuel? Is love really an exclusive emotion? Great minds and thinkers have been debating the meaning of love since antiquity and that debate has never been settled. Love has been under terrible duress in the 21^st century with its gender war and overt materialism but in the end it is the one thing that every person seeks at every moment of every day. Some find it, at least for a short time, while most never do. Their quotidian existence strips them of the ability to experience the greatest experience life can offer, though the reasons differ by culture and gender. By the time their maturity allows them to objectively interpret their environment and their own existence they are too old to be able to engage in the very reason we live, and still it is enough to move mankind forward. Go figure. I lived only to engage in love – the pursuit of love, the pleasure of love, and the agony of love. For me there was love and then there was everything else.”

“You sound like a dime novel.”
            “Only because you have not had enough time on this planet to grasp that those dime novelists are on to something – and because you are still too young and prideful to love a woman, or women, with all of your natural ability. Most men never do. Try hard to bring this talent to the surface of your being before you are so old that it does not matter. You will remember this conversation if you are ever able to do so.”

“Is it only men that are incapable of love? Is every woman capable?”

“Hell no. Most women are too busy competing with other women and comparing what prizes and other goods and services they collected with their youth, beauty, and appeal while they have it. After that is gone they are often too busy fretting about losing their youth and beauty to notice that life and love are passing them by.”

“But not you…”

“No. Not me.”’

“So you have no regrets?”

“Of course I have regrets! Did you think I lived this long and didn’t learn from my mistakes? I regret the loves I did not have, the loves that should have been but turned me down, and even some of those that I turned down. I regret not having 10 children. I regret that I never climbed Kilimanjaro. I have quite a few more regrets. My greatest regret was not being able to love Maria more – more time, more passion, more everything. She was a goddess. It just wasn’t meant to be.”

“And I just don’t know what to do,” finished Sherry.

Maria smiled gently and reached out for Sherry’s hand. “Most of us women don’t know what to do in these situations. We all say one thing and do another. We advise our friends one way and take a completely different path ourselves. Consistency is not our greatest strength. We do not have the luxuries in love that men have – especially once we have children. But you need to have children! And you are not getting any younger.”

“Thanks for reminding me. My mother says the same thing,” Sherry said.
            “Of course! Your mother has lived long enough to see the depth and breadth and the limits of life. I am standing on the precipice and your mother can see the edge from her age, but you can neither feel nor see the limits that time imposes on all of us at your age. You are going to have to take it on good advice from us. Which most don’t do. I certainly didn’t.”

A crash in the corridor room reminded the women conspiring together in Maria’s room that they were not alone and did not have all day.

“What did you do?” asked Sherry.

“I took the safe course and married a safe man. He was a good man; a real man. I spent 27 years married to him but he was not the love of my life. That title belongs to a man that I spent a total of 9 months with.”

Maria’s eyes were moist and distant. Sherry wanted to know more but did not wish to upset her patient. Maria was willing to oblige.

“I wanted out of my marriage several times,” Maria continued, wiping her eyes. “And my true love wanted me to leave my marriage and marry him. I wanted to, too, but somehow I couldn’t. I had children and a life with my husband. It wasn’t perfect, but would a new marriage and a broken home for my children have been an improvement? I don’t think it would have. I remained faithful to my husband, as dull as he was, until he passed away. That was 32 years ago. I often wondered what became of my former lover.”
            “Why didn’t you contact him?”

“Oh, I thought about it many times, but we had a falling out the last time I saw him. I was separated from my husband and he pursued me, but I decided to return home to my life and my husband in Argentina. He took it very hard and told me never to contact him again and I never did. I never heard from him again.”

Maria’s voice was trembling and she wiped her eyes again and again.

“Would you have done anything differently if you had heard from him?” asked Sherry.
            “No,” said Maria, so low Sherry could not hear it but read it on Maria’s lips.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know if this helps… but you telling me this makes me feel better about my own confusing love life,” said Sherry.

“I am glad to hear that. It doesn’t change the past. Each of us makes our own happiness. I did what I thought was right.”

            “So what happened?” asked Emmanuel.

“We met again later in life. She was separated from her husband and I pursued her with reckless abandon, but in the end she decided to stay in her marriage. I never saw her again.”

“So what’d you do?” prodded Emmanuel.

“What could I do? I sought a love like that again but never found it. I met amazing women and beautiful lovers, traveled the world, had two more children with a woman half my age, engaged in commerce and started another successful business – and missed her every day of my life.”

“So then what happened?” asked Sherry.

“I went home to my husband. Nothing changed – there are no surprises from a man after the age of 30 – but I had a comfortable life. I wanted my children to have the stability of an intact family,” answered Maria.

“Were you happy?”

Maria looked up into Sherry’s eyes and smiled a kind smile.

“My love, we make our own happiness. The people in your life do not determine your happiness.”

Sherry paused and then said, “Well, if that were true then it would not really matter who, or what, is in your life,” said Sherry.

There was a short and profound silence in room 412 at the Sea Breeze Nursing Home and Hospice Care of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

“No, I don’t think that that’s true,” Sherry continued. “I think life is a series of compromises. Some compromises are worth making and others are not. Some people are better at being flexible and are better able to compromise.”

There was another long pause in room 412. After a while Maria quietly said, “You don’t know how right you are,” as she looked out of the window. “I sacrificed love and passion with the man that I loved because I was insecure. Later, I could not accept divorce and the failure I felt divorce represented. After my husband died I never found a love like the love I had, and rather than settle for an imperfect love I had none. My values and morals had held me prisoner and when I finally realized that, well, it was too late. I was old and the season had passed.”

“But you had a full life and eventually remarried and had more children?” an incredulous Emmanuel said more than asked.

“I was rejected, I was not dead. I continued on with my life,” answered Pete. “That does not mean I did not miss her terribly. I enjoyed love, children, and success… and every time I closed my eyes I thought of Maria.”

“For 40 years? Wow. Now that’s love,” said Emmanuel. “Or mental illness.”

Pete smiled ruefully as he lay there on the crisp white sheets of his bed at the Sea Breeze Nursing Home in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

“This body is old and weak. In fact, it is dying. Yet my mind is sharp and my passion and desire for my lost love remains even after a lifetime of wine, women, and song. I did not stop living just because I could not have her, and I did not stop loving her just because I was capable of truly living. Think about what it is that I just said. Personally, I think this was one of my best qualities, though many women resented me for it  - but only because they were trapped in the absurd belief that they would be young forever. I think it is mental illness to stop living and loving, for any reason, and I think its even worse when we stop living and blame that on our love for another – though that seems to be the norm. Somehow our culture has evolved to try to convince us that a love is not worthy unless it is somehow perfect; somehow pure. Donkey dust! Life is a series of compromises. I found it easy to compromise and to bend to the circumstances at hand. Insisting on things that cannot be is a fool’s errand. Things can be no other way than the way they are,” Pete paused for a moment and then added, “I have not spoken about Maria to anyone in 40 years but she was never far from my thoughts.”

Emmanuel had no response to this and sat quietly. Pete drifted peacefully off to sleep. Emmanuel left the room to check on his other charges and returned to Pete’s room to bring him his dinner but Pete had drifted off further than just sleep. When Emmanuel returned to Pete’s room he found Pete had checked out for the Big Move.

Emmanuel looked down on Pete’s inert body and said out loud as if Pete could hear him, “Well played, Pete. Well played.”

Sherry sat quietly while Maria composed herself. When Maria opened her eyes Sherry was smiling kindly at her and Maria smiled back.

“It is not easy being a woman. We deny ourselves much of what life has to offer in order to maintain appearances. We resent men for possessing an ability we so often lack, and then punish ourselves for lacking it. We do not consider the abilities we have that they do not. I have lived a long and full life. My life would have been fuller still if I had taken the opportunity to love Pete when I could have and not worried about whether I should have. I know he would not have worried about it at all. He would have loved me and accepted the consequences. I would not - or could not. This is my greatest regret,” Maria said and closed her eyes.

Sherry sat there quietly thinking over all that Maria had shared with her.

“Was that his name? Pete?” asked Sherry.

Maria did not answer. After a while Sherry reached over to brush the lose strands of thin grey hair from Maria’s forehead. It was then that Sherry realized that Maria was gone. Maria had slipped quietly away, but she said what she needed to say and then checked out for the Big Move. 
Sherry reached for Maria’s hand and held it for a moment, mouthed the words “thank you” to her and turned and walked out into the hall of the Sea Breeze Nursing Home in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, closing the door to room 412 and on the life of Maria Concepcion Duarte Fernandez behind her.