The Nursing Home

IT WAS JANUARY 1973. The recession wasn’t official yet, but work was scarce. I’d read through every Help Wanted column for days and had seen nothing for a single mom-English major with three young children. When a small ad for a “Night Shift Nurse’s Aide, No Experience Needed, Apply in Person” jumped out like a laser light, I knew the job was mine. I also knew it would test my faith.

After years of agnosticism, my  faith had recently reawakened, but it was thin; I couldn’t believe in miracles and I didn’t like hypocrites. My bar for “real Christianity” was high and I knew that “the good and holy life” was impossible for most mortals, especially me. I sensed that when Jesus commanded us to “love our neighbors as ourselves” He didn’t want superficial wishy-washy niceness but profound system crashing truth. The way I saw it, His kind of love stood up to stressfully impossible circumstances; it erased offences and embraced enemies.

That wasn’t me. I valued courtesy and keeping the law, but I wasn’t particularly loving and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be. I didn’t know about the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit and thought that living a “Christian” life, was totally up to me. Even if I  might imagine a God who was big enough and able enough to change me, an intellectually bent Narcissus, into generosity, I wasn’t sure  He’d do it and I wasn’t at all sure that I’d let Him. My analytical mind balked at the chasm between life-as-I-knew-it and holiness, and I couldn’t fully reconcile Jesus’ highly relational love with healthy self-interest.

Outwardly, I could fake social comfort and conformity, but inwardly I preferred solitude. I liked family, not strangers. Daily interaction with three adored children was enough. Also, I’d gotten it into my head—after reading Walt Whitman’s account of nursing wounded soldiers during the Civil War and his poem “The Wound Dresser”—that real Christians would tend to the physical needs of helpless strangers. True Christians would clean up vomit, empty bedpans, bind wounds. I couldn’t. Ergo, my lack of love and my abhorrence of a stranger’s physical wastes strongly suggested to me that my return to faith might prove false.

Tears fell as I drove down snow frozen streets to interview for the opportunity to empty bedpans.  But determination and desperation were stronger than dread or pain. I had three children to feed and my ex, their dad, had stopped child support. Work was a practical necessity and I knew that this job in particular, caring for elderly strangers with wet pants and drool, would test whether or not I was “real” Christian—or could ever be. I had to find out. I needed to know almost as much I needed the income for groceries and gasoline.

As tears dried and the red on my face faded, I parked my rusty Olds. Carefully skirting slippery patches on the pavement I forced myself across the icy parking lot toward a single story two-wing brick nursing home. The big double backdoors were unlocked but heavy with cold metal guards and alarms; they were hard to push. As I leaned in to help them open, warm smells greeted me. Urine and kitchen grease laid over the lingering odors of fresh paint.

I was hired immediately and told to return for training and orientation that evening. Microwave dinners were in the freezer for a midnight meal. If a Jell-O or pudding were left in the fridge, I could help myself; coffee was in the staff room. Promptness was stressed; sign in at least fifteen minutes before the shift change and sign out only after all my work was done and the morning shift was on the floor. It was perfect—I’d get home just in time to get my children’s breakfast and kiss them off to school. I could sleep until school let out at three and didn’t leave for work until after their bedtimes.

I was the only aide that night and every night for five months—when they hired my replacement. My boss and instructor, a plump bleached blonde cigarette-smoking LPN with shiny pink lipstick arrived ahead of me. We were the night staff. Most residents were in bed before I arrived. A tall, stern professional looking evening nurse wearing a white uniform and a winged cap was parceling out night meds to patients sitting at the dining room tables; she watched carefully to make sure every pill was swallowed. Three impatient evening aides were waiting to sign out as soon as I (the night aide) signed in.

As the shift changed, quiet settled in for the night, and our routine began. Whenever an occasional light flashed above a doorway the LPN and I answered together. After the first night, she said we’d take turns. Between lights, we talked, she got out her knitting, I read and decided to start writing my first novel. Around 11:30 we put our frozen Swanson Dinners in the oven and a bit after midnight we ate through the taste of aluminum.

About one, we made our first rounds. I pushed a big stainless steel linen cart along the dimmed linoleum corridors. We quietly entered each darkened room and felt the sheets and absorbent pads beneath of every incontinent resident. If bed was wet or messed, it was usually a simple, routine matter to roll a slumbering person onto his or her side, change a wet hospital gown and replace a used absorbent pad with a clean dry one. For those few residents who would wet or mess onto their sheets, we worked as a team, gently rolling the drowsy one from one side of the bed to the other, carefully washing them with warm water as tenderly as if tending to a sleeping infant, and replacing their soiled linens with fresh ones.

Most residents did not wake up, they’d murmur a bit groggily and cooperate. Perhaps they’d been given sleeping pills. I was never told. Fortunately, this was before AIDS; unfortunately, it was also before absorbent diapers. About four in the morning we made the rounds again and repeated the process.

At five a.m. it was my duty to begin to waken a handful of ambulatory women, I helped them shower according to a schedule and then buttoned buttons, snapped snaps, pulled up cotton stockings, straightened under-slips, struggled with shoehorns, tied shoes, combed hair and pinned jewelry. Noses powdered to their liking, I would help my ladies down the corridors to sit and wait at their places in the dining room. Between six and seven a.m., assignments complete, morning aides at work, I signed out. How good it was to step through those doors and walk away from the stale institutional odors. I’d breathe in the snappy cold fresh air and sit shivering in a beat up white rusting out 1962 2 door Oldsmobile Starfire with cold red leather upholstery, waiting for the engine to warm, searching the darkened morning sky for all the stars I could find.

The first weeks were dull, routine. My boss always smoked, read magazines, and knit. I got used to the smell of urine, learned to crochet, and continued writing my novel. Mildly depressed from constant fatigue and the atmosphere of dwindling life, I didn’t think much about God. I did my work blankly, never processing how automatically easy it was becoming to empty bedpans and serve these dear elderly moms and dads—it had been easy from the very first night. It never crossed my mind that something remarkable might be going on until I overheard the evening nurse talking to my boss about Ruth.

Ruth, a resident in her late eighties, a former grade school principal, was a perfect curmudgeon. She’d complain about the color of Jell-O at dinner; she’d complain because she wanted two puddings—or three—or chocolate not vanilla. She was resentful, stubborn, and full of her own notions. She insisted on going to bed last: she’d grumble like a child and linger, alone in her wheelchair in the empty dining room, until every other resident was in their room. She particularly disliked the evening nurse and told every trapped listener she could find that this nurse was a mean one, that this nurse hated her. The nurse, who I never saw slip from professional tact, eventually developed a strong dislike for Ruth. And now this nurse was marveling over how Ruth had changed. Something was up.

Ruth needed to change. She was an unhappy, demanding woman. Not only did she complain about food and insist on going to bed last, once she was in bed, her buzzer began to ring. When we’d answer she’d say there was a man under her bed. If we’d say no one was there, she’d ring again. When we went back, she’d complain that he’d returned and was hiding in her closet—or behind the door. The staff had grown impatient long before I was hired. They ignored her or brushed her off with words like, “Ruth, you get the same food as everyone else and you’re the only one complaining. Get over it.” They dismissed her fears about the man in her room with brief and factual rebuttals, “Ruth, you’re hallucinating. No one is there.” Every time her buzzer would ring again or the light above her room would flash, impatience would swell.

At first, as a novice, I copied those around me and I too tired of her calls—until the night I found myself listening with care and taking her complaints seriously. Instead of telling her she was hallucinating and that no one was under her bed or in the closet, I made a big show of taking time to bend down and pretend a lengthy look and search; then I spoke to the unwelcome figment of imagination. That changed the ritual. She’d go to bed, ring the bell and I’d answer. Night after night I’d listen to her concern and bend down to look under the bed or go to the closet and open the door and say things to the invisible intruder like, “Now you know Ruth doesn’t want you here. Go away, right now. And don’t come back.” Then I’d point to the door and I’d wait a bit before reassuring Ruth, “He’s gone now. And he won’t come back.” Change was gradual, but soon the second and third rings became less frequent. Then nights came when her buzzer didn’t ring at all.

Listening to her grumble about pudding and Jell-O, I’d go to the refrigerator. If another color Jell-O were available, I’d bring it to her. When a pudding was left over, she got one. I tried to be gently solicitous, to respect the cultural milieu she had once moved in, even to almost treat her like royalty.

Sitting in the dining room, often the only one still up when my shift began, she’d beckon me to hear her complaints. If there were time, I’d pull up a chair and sit down, as if I were a lady-friend with leisure, not a nurse’s aide. We soon fell into a stilted quasi-intellectual overly courteous formal kind of discourse. She liked the pretentious conversational pattern. Once comfortable, barriers began to melt; I did what little I could to counter Ruth’s complaints. I told her that the nurse she hated had a hard life, that she had small children at home, that her husband was unreliable, that this was her second job. That was all truth, but I actually lied to Ruth too—at least it felt like a lie. By now, this nurse disliked Ruth decidedly; almost anyone would have winced with defensive protection with such a mean tongue constantly wagging his or her way. Nevertheless, I kept on planting seeds of suggestion, telling Ruth that she was being too hard on the staff, and assuring her that they didn’t actually dislike her as much as she thought. I’d say things like,  “She is tired and overworked. She needs your understanding. You are so much older than she is, wiser too, surely you can just try to humor her. Be nice. Maybe she’ll change.”

At first Ruth ignored me and kept on with ugly observations. But one night, while eating her second pudding, she said that maybe I was right. And not long after that the nurse said Ruth was changing—and no one knew why. I kept still, but wondered. Might God have used me as a catalyst for change? Me? I didn’t particularly like people, let alone a difficult tough old bird like Ruth. I wasn’t ready to make that connection.

Another remarkable change was kept secret. One sweet looking old lady, Marie, with an upswept hairdo and a gentle face had been born in a Balkan Country. She had lived most of her life in the United States of America and spoke English fluently with her own two sons, but she didn’t like being in a nursing home and refused to speak English with the staff. Although outwardly cooperative, she made it very clear that she didn’t like being awakened and dressed. And every morning, as I helped her walk down the corridor to the dining room she’d send dark glances my way and mutter toward me in a strange language. Her son had told a day nurse that she was swearing worse than any sailor, cursing us in her native tongue with the foulest, dirtiest imprecations she knew.

Around that time, I’d started going to a Catholic Charismatic prayer meeting and at a Life in the Spirit Seminar had received glossolalia or the gift of speaking in tongues. So one morning, as I bent down to put on her cotton stockings, and she began to mutter my way, I replied in a very pleasant conversational tone of voice—but in my new prayer language, not in English. She stopped and looked at me, startled, and spoke again. I spoke back, as if we were engaged in a conversation. Her mutterings diminished and changed and I thought it was great fun. After that we’d talk back and forth, especially on the long walk down the corridors and our conversational pauses and replies had an enjoyable rhythm. I didn’t know what I said; I knew enough about languages to recognize that we weren’t using the same tongue, so I don’t imagine that she understood me, but our exchanges felt encouraging; our coded conversations and my hidden joke felt kind, not mocking, and it was far lighter, far more fun than her solitary muttered curses.

More encounters with residents began to have spiritual significance. A few connections actually felt holy, especially one with an elderly Italian couple. He was bald, soft and pear shaped. His face was often sad and worry crossed over deep habit-lines from years of smiles that wanted to keep on smiling. Her legs, arms and torso were solid, like the trunk of a big sturdy tree. Dark graying hair curled, beguilingly feminine, around a broad stressed face. Clearly they loved one another and had lived in joy. Now cancer had taken her tongue. Her diet was liquid, through a straw, her breath was foul. Now unwanted multiplying cells were taking other functions. The hospital had dismissed her. In the days before hospice care; he couldn’t care for her at home. Not wanting separation, they’d entered the nursing home together. Boxes of candy she couldn’t eat sat on their television; plants and flowers filled their windowsill. Her rosary was never far from her hand. Their telephone rang often.

Gratitude suffused them—every time he rang the buzzer they apologized. He had trouble bending down; her shoelaces were difficult for his arthritic hands, could I help? Kneeling before her, unlacing well made sturdy black low-heeled pumps to ease her swollen feet, I felt like a knight or a page kneeling before a sovereign—it was an honor to serve. He always stood near, beaming with appreciation. Occasionally we prayed together, short conversational requests, asking God to please heal her. Sometimes she would take both my hands and shake them up and down as she said thank you.

One night he told me, sadly, they wouldn’t see me again. She was going back to the hospital; he couldn’t go; he was going to move in with a son. With teary eyes she opened her arms to hug me good-bye. What could I do? Refuse? I hugged her back. Then, quite foreign and unprofessional to me, I knew she wanted to kiss me good-bye. Thinking of the cancer in her mouth, expecting a peck on the check, I nodded yes. She took my face between her hands and kissed me—pure as can be, like a doting mother kissing a small child—right smack on the mouth, her lips on mine. I kissed her back, not quite as sure. Another little hug, more smiling good-byes and I walked out of the room wanting to wash my mouth.

I remembered St. Francis and the leper and condemned myself. For weeks afterwards thoughts of the Italian saint of Assisi haunted me. Memories of this dear Italian momma’s gift of affectionate blessing were diminished by a sense of failure and anxiety. I was irrationally afraid of catching cancer or a bad bug from the foulness in her mouth. Outwardly, love had triumphed, but I knew in my heart of hearts that God sees into the deep places, the inmost closets of our being. I wanted to believe that I’d won a secret spiritual victory—and maybe I did, because I’d done the right thing and knew I’d do it again. But my fearfulness was a clear sign that I was still far removed from the kind of love that casts out fear, the kind of love I haughtily thought necessary to call myself Christian. I’d bumbled through by grace for her sake, God’s grace covered my mistake; inside I was still cowardly, reserved, and fearful.

Even so, evidence of spiritual grace continued, unbidden, to accumulate. Always it surprised me. Divorce had dropped me from a world of opera, art, intellectual satisfactions and comfort into a world shaped by practical survival needs. Most of the nursing home residents had been honed by hard times too. Almost all came from small-town middle class backgrounds. There were former farmers, secretaries, factory workers, salespeople, tradesmen, and lots of housewives. Most had been born between 1880 and 1910 and raised in worlds untouched by modernity. School days for them meant reading, beautiful penmanship, and arithmetic. Their teachers didn’t know much about Darwin, Freud or Scientific Materialism. These elderly folks grew up in a culture that took faith in God and patriotism for America for granted. They had lived simple frugal lives; they’d worked hard, survived the depression, and they prayed.

Not so the culture of the nursing home staff. Many nurses and aides were baby boomers. They’d grown up in the midst of the sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies; copies of Playboy and Vogue, magazines that reflected the zeitgeist, filled their staff room. Their culture was colored by relativistic postmodernism. Eleven years earlier prayer had been outlawed from schools and god-talk, apart from expletives, was increasingly uncool. These young people embraced the American Dream of upward mobility and served wine and cheese to the residents every afternoon around four. It was a treat for many, but quite a few elderly folks raised their eyebrows and refused the ritual—they’d grown up during the final gasps of the temperance movement in families and churches that supported prohibition. If they did drink alcohol, they thought wine was for big celebrations like weddings and Holy Communion—and cheese for sandwiches and macaroni.

Occasionally a little faith-talk or a short prayer with these elderly residents who’d faithfully said their prayers since childhood happened automatically. Sometimes they’d initiate a spiritual moment; sometimes a word of blessing would slip from my lips. Often, as the night aide, I was the last person a resident saw before sleep. One bedtime conversation I’ll never forget.

The lady was tall, gracious, and slender. Long thick graying dark braids were carefully wound and secured in place around her head. She was elegant even in a regulation hospital gown. Her manner was educated and courteous, her posture, and bearing alert. When she turned her head or moved her hands I wondered if she’d been trained in ballet. She’d come to the nursing home for a brief recuperation following hip surgery. One night she wanted to talk. The hall lights weren’t out yet, some busyness had caused a delay. I felt compelled to stand by her door, leaning into the jamb, listening.

Her family had decided for her, and she didn’t like it.  She wasn’t going back to her own home, ever. The next day she would move into a room in her daughter’s house. She was afraid of dying. She did not look forward to it—at all. And was there a heaven? She wasn’t sure.

I was surprised at the personal turn the conversation took then. I told her how arthritis had set into my childhood knee injuries and that I wore a knee support, how in making rounds, I often limped and how I couldn’t run anymore. I described how I had once loved an occasional run, loved those rare exhilarating minutes in the zone where movement becomes effortless and turns to floating over hard pavement. Then I told her about a recent dream of running through a vast meadow; the tall grass didn’t tickle; it was dotted with small flowers—pinks, yellows, whites, and blues. The ground underfoot was smooth, my feet were steady and sure, the temperature was perfect, the run the best. I never tired or thought of breathing. When I woke up, it seemed I’d visited Heaven.

And then, without thinking, I blurted out, “Oh I can’t wait to get to Heaven. I’ll be able to run again!” She looked surprised and her face lit up. She mused— “Well if it’s like that…” She smiled— she looked inward—she said, “That’s something to think about.” We said goodnight and good-byes. She was visibly happier.

Since she wasn’t on my schedule of early risers I left the next morning without seeing her again. The next two days I was off. It was a couple weeks before I finally heard that the morning after we spoke an aide went in to check on her and she didn’t wake up. Everyone was shocked. The coroner said it was a natural death.

Saying good-bye to Mizzie was not as easy. It was painful. In fact, we never actually did get to say good-bye. I left her. She was in pain and surrounded by misunderstanding the morning I got fired. I might have been fired because of her. My relationship with Mizzie was the first to penetrate my skepticism as a miracle in the making. I couldn’t deny it or hide it.

This dear shriveled lady was skin and bones stuck in a fetal position. During the day, strapped into her wheel chair, she tried to be a fashion plate. But ignoring the attempted elegance of clip earrings, necklace or brooch, her head drooped forward; restraints held her shoulders somewhat upright, and her knees buckled up. My boss said it was a result of sleeping curled up for decades. At night, secure between high guardrails on both sides of her bed, she curled tight into a ball. Her dresses had pizazz, good fabrics with nice touches like lace collars or decorative buttons. Each week she had a manicure, and her claw like hands ended with bright red polished nails. Her thinning hair was always permed frizzy and close to her head. It was washed and set weekly, at extra cost. The day staff took pains to please Mizzie’s daughter; she was full pay. No government subsidies or insurance secured her stay.

I’d heard that during the day she was no bother. She was docile about the wheel chair and pleasant enough to the other residents. She’d alert aides to her bathroom needs and would cooperate in sliding from wheel chair to toilet chair. Since she weighed next to nothing, every aide could help her. She’d placidly doze or somewhat passively participate in organized group activities. At night, however, when her sleep was interrupted, she appeared demonized.

To make it worse, Mizzie was incontinent. She wet her bed every night, usually twice. And Mizzie did not like her sleep disturbed. If a nurse aroused her she would scratch and fight. She would try to bite. No nurse or aide would approach her alone at night. While one restrained her arms, another would wash her and change her bed linens. If her messes were material, she’d been known to get her hands into the goo and smear it on anyone and anything near. Nobody liked that.

If you ask me what happened with Mizzie, I couldn’t tell you, but I know that after a month or two, she stopped resisting me. She would quietly circle her arms around my neck and hold onto me like a flexible baby, letting herself be moved. When I rolled her from one side of the bed to another, she’d agree. I could easily turn her without help. Soon I was taking care of her alone. There was no fight, no mess, no scratching, only cooperation. It wasn’t drugs because it only happened with me. On my nights off she was still a problem, still a feisty mean old gal to anyone who disturbed her sleep.

The staff, including my boss, decided to solve their problem. With permission from Mizzie’s sister, she was to get a catheter. When I arrived one night the earlier shift was on edge. The process had begun. One aide held her down. Three nurses, two from the earlier shift and my boss were struggling with her.  She fought. There seemed to be anatomical difficulties. It took a long time. I was told to stay out. I sat in the corridor on the floor beside her door, head down, and prayed. Whatever was going on sounded awful.

Frankly, I don’t remember if the procedure was successful or if they gave up. I was grateful when the ordeal ended. That night over Swanson dinners my boss went into technical detail, perhaps defensively, smiling all the while about the medical difficulty the procedure had presented and why it had been difficult. She sounded defensive; I felt critical. Things were different between us, strained. I felt awkward—suspecting the staff might have done something not quite right, that I knew their dirty secret, that I wasn’t part of the team. I didn’t want to be and they clearly didn’t want me. I didn’t know what to do.

Because I was perpetually tired, raising three children, and never getting enough sleep, there wasn’t time, energy, or desire to think it all through. Change came rapidly. The next week, a few residents had diarrhea. One night, almost before my coat was off, I was directed to clean a man I’d never met or worked with before. Until that night, the evening shift had always put him to bed before I arrived and the morning shift got him up after I’d gone home. I’d heard about him though. He was a groper. Given the chance, he’d grab at the nurse’s breasts, pinch their behinds or reach between their legs. I wondered if the nurses had left him in his wheelchair, sitting in his stuff, to irritate him or to irritate me. His mess was not fresh. Particles had already dried out; they stuck to the few straggly hairs remaining around his tender male parts. It was not a quick job. He was embarrassed. There was no funny business on his part. It was a slow work, being careful not to hurt him, trying not to humiliate him further.

Two or three nights later, to my surprise, a new aide joined night shift. She was a tiny nineteen year-old girl with a certificate from the local junior college to qualify her as a nurse’s aide. The LPN in charge said that Charlene had come onboard for training. They hit it off well, they liked the same television shows, read the same magazines, chewed the same brand of gum, and had a professional air about them. I felt like an outsider.

Charlene was there the next night too, and the next—for an entire week of training. At first I rather liked the help. The second night the LPN stopped answering buzzers. When a bell rang, Charlene and I took turns. By night three Charlene began to jump up and literally, physically run to get ahead of my limp to answer every bell. She’d be half way down the hall before I’d taken five steps. I’d follow after and join her, but she didn’t want that. She’d say, “Oh let me do it. I’m trained. I’m younger. I’m faster. I can do it. I don’t need help to get someone a glass of water or empty a bedpan.” When my boss, the LPN said, “Let her go. She wants to do it, just sit down and relax,” I did.

I was tired. It was the last week of May. School would be out in a week. My children would be home. They needed me. I was troubled. The thought of quitting was warm and inviting, but I wasn’t a quitter. Besides, God had given me the job. We needed the money. The inner turmoil increased; my six-year old daughter and my two sons, nine and eleven, needed a day-time Mom at home for the summer. My mother said she couldn’t take on the task: she rarely cooked, she didn’t shop for groceries, plan meals, or clean house. How could I manage a forty-hour night shift, keep house and be there for the children without sleep? Years later I learned to do without sleep, but this was then. The urge to be at home for the summer was strong.

Back and forth I went. I couldn’t quit. I’d bonded to several residents; I didn’t want to leave them. I was willing to give the rest of my life to serving as nurse’s aide.

It was a dilemma until one night, in the late twilight of early June, as I walked through the parking lot toward another night of work behind the heavy doors, a voice in my heart very clearly formed the words, “You’re going to be fired in the morning.” I doubted it. I didn’t recognize the peace God wraps around His words. I couldn’t separate His voice from the dreaded possibility that hearing a voice from God might be a signal that I was going crazy, that I might be mentally ill, or that my own active imagination was at work.

That night, as I pushed open the door to enter the nursing home and met the familiar odors of urine, paint and cooking, there was another smell, it was foul. I quickly forgot about the voice and all thoughts of being fired. That night was too busy for any reflection.

The few cases of diarrhea had spread. I’d walked into an epidemic. The night staff was down to two. Charlene wasn’t there. She’d a new schedule and it was her night-off.

In one night the lights flashed more than they ordinarily did in a week. The LPN was busy; I was busy. Mostly we arrived in time to place, empty, and rinse out a bedpan before hurrying to another bedside. The lights flashed urgently, insistently; we’d rush to turn them off, and to get another bedpan under another arthritic body unable to tend to its own needs. We never put the laundry cart away— and the usually more than ample supply of fresh sheets and blankets needed replenishing twice, once during the night, once again in the morning. The doctor had already been consulted. He’d visited during an earlier shift and said not to worry, it would be over in twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Just ride it out.

As morning dawned, and the day shift arrived, the buzzers were turned on. Routines were delayed as nurses and aides hurried to answer calls. When the director arrived, she asked me cordially to step into her office as soon I was done. She’d like to talk with me before I went home.

I didn’t have time to think on her request beyond a quick hope that it might be my chance to ask for part-time hours on a day shift for the summer; I even wondered if I might be getting a raise. As morning residents needed their bedclothes changed for the third and fourth time, fuses shortened. One day-nurse prickled with impatience. Overtired, I ignored her; it was well after six— my supervising LPN had been long gone— her eldest caught an early school bus.

Finally, in a lull, all my work done, I headed toward the directors office. At that very moment a morning aide refused to answer Emily’s second buzzer call. She’d just cleaned up Emily, only minutes before. The head morning nurse looked at me and said, “You can’t go yet. Take care of Emily.” Emily was particularly embarrassed. She needed washing again, she needed fresh garments again, and clean sheets, and a new blanket. Emily cared for, I washed up well, combed my hair, and turned toward the director’s office. Emily’s buzzer was ringing again. Once again, the head nurse said, “Get it.” I did. Emily was even more embarrassed. Apologetic. Task done, I turned around to leave. I hadn’t crossed the dining hall when the buzzer went off again. Turning, I saw Emily’s light, the buzzer was hers. I went to her dimly lit room automatically. She needed another change of linens. She felt awful. Embarrassed. Humiliated. Helpless. She was needy and sick. There was not one impatient cell in me, there hadn’t been all night—tender movements of compassion filled the air around us—Emily soaked it up—comforted. Her smelly room became an oasis of peace. I didn’t walk out; I was carried out on waves of compassion. It had to be God.

Years later a nurse friend explained what happened to me. She’d had similar experiences. She said, “When I went on the floor I forgot about myself.” Again and again, I had forgotten about myself, and now on the night it was most needed, “self” seemed gone, I was filled with mercies far beyond my own.

A few minutes later, sitting across from the director, I heard, “You’re fired. Don’t come back.” She explained that there was no fault with my work. She was letting me go because I didn’t fit in. I was too religious. No residents had complained— at least not yet, for that she was grateful, but staff members were uncomfortable around me; they had seen me occasionally praying with the residents.

I was stunned. Driving home I turned the wrong way down a one-way street. I couldn’t sleep, so I went to the YMCA for a swim. I was still awake when my children came home from school that afternoon. And I was there, wide awake after a good night’s sleep, waiting to greet them when school got out early on the last half-day.

Shortly after that, while walking the children home from a happy swim at a near-by beach, I met the nursing home director’s favorite part-timer; she was a regular fill-in for days off, sick call-ins, and vacation days. She’d said that she’d been hoping to reconnect with me—to find out how I was doing. She said the director told the staff that they’d had to let me go because I had stopped answering calls. My nurse friend laughed, a bit cynically. She said, “I’d worked with you. I knew it was a lie.” Apology, perhaps tinged with guilt, filled her voice as she went on, “I couldn’t say anything because I need the job.”

I felt vindicated. Someone knew the truth, and so did God. I’d passed His test—and He’d passed mine. When selfless love returns to me, it always comes as a gift for others. I can’t possess or claim it. Ask my family, they know my weaknesses. In that brief nursing home assignment, God’s love proved sufficient where mine was not. His love didn’t fail.