Janet

My job brings me into close contact with people with various illnesses and physical challenges. It’s interesting for me to interact with people both older and younger than me who are dealing with situations that I cannot imagine dealing with. You can learn a lot about a person’s character when you spend time with someone who is living a life of tremendous difficulty, brought about by physical trauma or disease.

This is not a passing of judgment on Janet. I met her for the first time today and spent about 45 minutes with her. She is missing a leg, and I am unsure what else is going on in her life. She is a chain smoker and I suspect she may have cancer, but am only basing that on her diminished appearance. I could be wrong, and I didn’t ask.

She is living in “transitional care.” The implication there to me is that this is where one lives until other accommodations can be made, until a sufficient  “transition” can be made. Wow. I’m smart, huh?

Janet said transitional care is where you go to die. She is on the first floor of her facility – the public entrance is on the second floor, and it is an attractive and we’ll maintained area. Administrative offices, a large community room, a well organized nurses station and brightly lit hallways decorated with engaging art greets each visitor at this entrance.

The entrance to the first floor, to the “transitional care” area, is on the rear of the building. Near a large metal structure, covered with a ragged green tarp, inside which is a few folding chairs and a long table – the smoking area. The door to transitional care is the type of door you’ve seen on walk in coolers. Big, thick, heavy – industrial white.

Right next to the tarped smoking area.

Janet described the quality of the food as very bad, the staff as mediocre and usually overworked and inattentive. She relayed other details about the facility, and we both agreed that hey, man, whether the business is about housing dying humans or putting satellites in space, lowest bidder gets the contract and profits must be top priority – spend as little as you can and make as much as you can, and let the chips fall where they may, everything else be damned.

She has one sister who visits occasionally, but their relationship is strained, so you know, it’s just whatever it is. “Tis what tis.” She has a few friends, but they’re all in similar situations in the same facility.

I’m not sure what my point is with all this. I sympathize with Janet. I feel for her. I can sense her frustration, I can sense her fear and sadness, I can sense her aloneness. But I cant do a thing to help her. This is her life. She is fading from the bright white of life through the grays of transition into the black of forgotten. She is alone, she knows she is dying, she accepts it. She regrets not doing more fun things, not spending more money on vacations, or on friends and family. She is sad.

As I drove away today, she sat inside the tarped smoking area and lit a smoke. She looked at me and smiled, and gave me a wave. I treated her well during our brief time together today, because she deserves it. We all deserve it.

And for the briefest moment, in her smile and wave, I saw Janet as I’d never seen her before – full of her life, alive, but “transitioning.”

Damn. Makes me happy for what I’ve got. Makes me ponder my control over how I live or . . . “transition.”

Yeah.