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[stoopbeck]

Wow. Guess I got shown.

I angst out a lot about stupid random stuff. Most of my journal is taken up with it. I just got back from painting people's nails in a nursing home. Most of them had no idea what was going on. If I ever complain about how sucky my life is, slap me. Please.

I think hell smells of disinfectant and dispair, of old people and young people who don't care for the places their charges have been, for what they've seen in their eighty-odd years, too old to hide the tears for what they once were, for a whole lifetime worth of memories-- sadness and mirth, laughter and birth, people whose bodies rot as their minds rot away, or, what is worse, their minds remain the same, but all around them there are changes from what they once knew, and there are so few of their old familiar friends to pass the time with...

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[stoopbeck.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, no... I always worry about that. There's actually kind of a funny story in our family about it that scares the crap out of me, but whatever... My dad's grandmother had a stroke. She was lying in a hospital bed and my dad's parents were talking to the doctor. He walked over to the bed, picked up her arm, said, "Hellooo... Miss Willie? Are you in there?" and turned to my grandparents and said, "Let's face it, Mr and Mrs West, she's going to be a vegetable for the rest of her life." Through a coma and stroke damage and whatever, my greatgrandmother grated out, "To hell with you." She taught herself how to read and walk and talk, and lived for quite some time afterward. Good story. Bad part-- this guy was willing to consign her to a bed for the rest of her life, and she could hear every word he said. That scares me. What scares me even more is the possibility of losing my mind. One of the people we painted nails for yesterday kept worrying that the colors we had were "too dangerous" and that we were going to keep her hands. Another is convinced he's the President. Gah. Enough to keep me awake at night, right?