True Empathy

by Melissa Forgey

Overview

Aging … Do you fear it, or do you embrace it?

True Empathy takes you on a journey through the eyes of a care provider with thirty-two years of experience in caring for the elderly. Melissa fearlessly talks about aging from a professional perspective and as a daughter of aging parents. A feeling she calls true empathy paved her way. She shares pieces of her personal life, which include family mental illness, suicide, secrets, cancer, death, and healing.

True Empathy addresses current attitudes about aging and illustrates how our overburdened healthcare system still often neglects our most vulnerable people. This story offers hope and guidance from perhaps unexpected places. If you are concerned about your own aging, that of your parents, or that of another relative—whether aging or in the dying process—this book could prove to be an invaluable resource. And if you are a care provider, considering a career in care providing, or simply a person who cares about others, Melissa’s experiences will resonate with you.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504326810
Publisher:	Balboa Press
Publication date:	03/31/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	166
File size:	215 KB

Read an Excerpt

True Empathy

---

By Melissa Forgey

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2015 Melissa Forgey
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5043-2680-3

---

CHAPTER 1

A New Journey

Who was this woman who was placed beside the receptionist's window like a decoration, and a haunting one at that? As I asked for an application, I avoided looking at her directly. This woman's face was defined by the outline of her skull. Her mouth gaped open, and sharp, piercing eyes peered through sunken holes. These eyes seemed to see into my subconscious; they made me feel uncomfortable. She was tied to a chair with a vest that had straps. Perhaps the vest was a weak attempt to cover the harshness of the restraint. She was wearing a plaid dress of multiple colors. Beneath her chair sat a muted-yellow puddle of urine. White bobby socks hung loosely on her spindly legs, contrasted by worn black loafers. I wondered, Why did they tie her? It was clear to me, even in my youth, that she could not walk. Perhaps the restraints provided some kind of false security for the nursing staff or the office staff, who were running to and fro, hardly noticing her.

Are they all like this? I asked myself as I handed my application to the receptionist.

"Call soon," she said. "We may have work for you."

I felt a lump in my stomach as I attempted to appear enthusiastic, all the time avoiding those piercing eyes from the woman tied to the chair by the receptionist's window. This woman, who seemed to be doing nothing, was stirring something deep inside me. I wanted to run away. I left the building, but the image of the woman stayed with me.

"Come on Tuesday," the nursing director told me when I called the next day. "You will need a uniform and white nursing shoes."

I was hired as a nurse's aide. I did not even want to be a nurse's aide, much less work in that environment. Yet I knew I did not want to return home to Ohio. Fear like a dense, dark cloud hung in the wings of my consciousness, creating chaos in any peaceful moment. How did I get here? I wondered.

Only a few weeks prior, I was sitting in a motel room with my mom and my brother, Matthew. The room smelled damp and musty. Matthew and I sat on one of the twin beds while Mom sat on the other, writing me a check. Mom slowly and carefully tore the check from the checkbook. She looked good for a woman who had just finished a long drive from Ohio to Vermont. Mom always looked nice. She wore a gray blazer, white blouse, and black dress pants. She possessed a natural sense of how to present herself—always just the right amount of jewelry and makeup applied so subtly that it looked natural. Her features were soft, and her smile was welcoming. Not today though—her face was set with no hint of warmth.

"This is it," she said as she handed me the check. "You will have to find a job or come home."

I said, "Thanks." As I studied the check for fifty dollars, I thought, Hell of a graduation present.

"Your dad and I have your graduation present at home. We will give it to you there," Mom said as if she had read my mind.

Matthew slid me his card. Inside was a check for two hundred dollars. I was surprised. He looked at me intently. He did not have to say anything. I knew if he had felt comfortable enough to do so, he would have said, "Here's some more time, Meliss."

Matthew looked very vulnerable. He had recently been discharged from the navy with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. His curly, brown hair was a little on the long side, and his thin, six-foot-three-inch frame shook, as the medications gave him tremors. Dad was noticeably absent. It was the night before my college graduation, and I wanted to party with my friends; yet I felt torn leaving Mom and Matthew in the motel room. My decision was to party with my friends. Part of me was relieved that Dad was not there. He said it was too hard for him to drive from Ohio to Vermont. I did not completely buy his story and allowed myself to feel hurt—a little. Anyway, this made spending time with my friends easier. Tonight I would party. Tomorrow I would go through the motions. And then I had to find a job. Life was loud then and cluttered with insecurities. Any quiet whispers that offered me solace fell silent, or perhaps I would not still myself enough to listen.

Procrastination was the result of my insecurities. Friends were familiar and safe. Employers were foreign and scary. I had completed my credit requirement a semester early. My parents had allowed me to stay in Vermont until graduation time, so I had hung out with my friends and occasionally looked for work. I had rented an apartment with a friend and an acquaintance I did not know very well. It made for cheap rent.

Now it was down to the wire, and my future was on the line. I felt if I returned to live with my parents, I would stagnate and never have a life. Lack of self-confidence was the biggest thing holding me back. After all, who would want to hire an awkward girl with thick glasses which didn't even fix her vision, who could not drive, who had a degree in fine arts, and who wore her insecurities on her sleeve?

Inaction was my tool of choice at the time. The division for the blind and visually impaired that assisted me in college also assisted me in my job search. My caseworker had suggested nursing homes, but I promptly dismissed the idea at the time. This idea I finally revisited, as other job options had not come to fruition.

My caseworker, whom I remember as a kind woman, drove me from nursing home to nursing home in an attempt to help me find a job I did not want. I developed a strategy of avoidance as I entered these facilities. Sometimes bad vision had its benefits, particularly when I did not want to see the environment for which I was applying for work. However, my plan fell short when I entered the last facility. There, right beside the receptionist's window, sat the gaunt woman with those piercing eyes.

I had mixed feelings as I called my family in Ohio to tell them I had a job. Matthew answered the phone. Upon hearing the news, he excitedly relayed the information to my parents. His enthusiasm for my success pleased me. He was a year and five days younger than I was. We were close as children. Our teenage years weren't so great, but now I knew he was in my corner. I always felt protective of Matthew. He wore his feelings on his sleeve, and that often created conflict in his life. Whenever I called Ohio, I spoke with both parents. One parent would be on the phone in the kitchen and the other on the phone in the master bedroom upstairs.

"I'm here," said Mom from the phone upstairs. Matthew handed the kitchen phone to Dad. Matthew's excitement was pervasive. I could tell that he was having a lucid day. I had learned to distinguish the Matthew I grew up with from his paranoid counterpart. Even in the midst of his disease, I had learned to recognize moments when I was speaking with him and not his illness.

On the phone, Dad usually dominated the conversations, and Mom occasionally chimed in. Dad even sounded a little excited as he said, "Hello." Still holding on to the predominant mood, I enthusiastically told them I was hired as a nurse's aide at a nursing home.

Dead silence.

About then I emotionally shut down on the conversation. No support there, I thought. I was on my own for this journey.

Many years later, Dad told me that I constantly dashed any mental images he had of me as an adult. On my first visit home after my first semester in college, Dad told me that he had imagined a much more sophisticated, well-dressed, well-spoken woman arriving at the airport. "I almost could see you carrying a small, white poodle," he said, half-smiling at the ridiculousness of his nonreality. Instead, I deplaned wearing work boots, jeans that had become too tight, and an overstretched patchwork sweater.

After my parents brought me home, I went upstairs to talk to Matthew, who had already gone to bed, as it was a late flight. I walked into his bedroom. He looked at me and said in his typical brutally honest way, "Boy, have you gotten fat."

With slumped shoulders, I slinked off to my bedroom. Matthew was blunt, but it was true and I could not blame the dorm dryers anymore.

My parents' disappointment in my new job only compounded my fears.

Tuesday arrived, and I entered the facility as I transformed my dread into numb acceptance. In every direction a harsh awakening to the human condition slammed my senses. I tentatively approached the nurses' station and introduced myself as the new nurse's aide. A nurse brought me to the adjacent wing and introduced me to Thelma, the nurse's aide who would be training me. Now I stood on the dock of new experience, and it was time to dive in. I took a deep breath, and off I went into unknown waters.

Mattie had an artificial leg. At first I thought it was a joke, but she really did have an artificial leg, and I had to help her remove it. Agnes dragged her walker behind her. She was all bent over, and at dinnertime she took out her false teeth and licked them clean. Helen moved at a snail's pace, and her slow movements made me want to laugh, but I didn't. Fred was all curled up in a fetal position. He had sores on every joint and on the back of his head. Some of the sores were open, while some had healed. He stayed in bed all of the time, as his body was too stiff and distorted to sit upright. Geraldine and Bernadette were in similar states of disrepair. Gertrude was a little lady who constantly talked about going to heaven. Pauline thought her husband hid in the cracks of doorways, and she walked around calling his name as she pressed her nose tightly to each door she found. Elaine was the safe haven. While disease prevented her body from moving, her welcoming personality and sense of humor drew the care providers to her for pleasant conversation and some sanity amongst the chaos.

Thelma, a tough-looking woman whose softness came through when she cared for these people, showed me the ropes. Never had I seen so much nakedness. Never had I seen bodies so riddled with disease or distorted with age. Never had I witnessed so many confused people, and never had I smelled or touched so much human excrement. We were not required to wear latex gloves then, and no matter how often I washed my hands, I could not completely remove the smell. Just before the shift ended, Marylou, who sat in a geri chair near the nurse's desk, vomited all over her tray and had diarrhea in her yellow pantsuit. Thelma and I took her into her room, lifted her onto the bed, and removed her clothes as best we could without getting feces and vomit everywhere. We bathed her and then washed her tray on the geri chair and rinsed the diarrhea from her yellow pantsuit. After throwing the last rinsed towel into the hamper, Thelma wiped her sweaty brow with her forearm. "Well Melissa," she said, "if you made it through today, you'll be just fine."

So there I was, at the end of my first day working as a nurse's aide. My crisp new uniform was stained with all sorts of organic material, and my nice, new, white shoes were now not so white. I felt tired but not exhausted. Something inside me had awakened. I now knew that deep within the cinderblock walls of this facility, with rooms painted in pretty colors as if to soften a sad reality, lay a wealth of humanity. These people were too vulnerable, too sick, and too lost in their lifetimes to be anyone other than who they were at that moment. All pretenses were lost. All that existed was the rawness of the human condition at its most fragile point. All I knew at that time was I did not want to leave. It is fair to say that my life changed that day.

CHAPTER 2

Unexpected Connections

Who were these people I bathed, fed, dressed, and cared for daily? Was it simply age, was it disease, or did they just give up? Every day the hallways of the nursing home became alive with brokenness. Yet it seemed to me, even in my youth, that no one really wanted to acknowledge that brokenness. That is, no one except for me. I tried to talk about it with my coworkers, only to be dismissed with trivial answers. I felt out of place. Perhaps they thought something was wrong with me. So I quieted myself for fear of losing my job.

Paralyzing fear—it held me back on so many things. I was so afraid of returning home. Home did not make sense at that time. Dad was sometimes crazy and controlling, Matthew was difficult and draining to be around, and Mom was overwhelmed with it all. It was not warm and welcoming. I felt I had no power there, and I wanted my own life. Having no income meant going home to me then. So I coped with the pain I witnessed on a daily basis at the nursing home by developing a brutally crude sense of humor. Shock value was a familiar tool for me. In high school I would draw violent, gory pictures and revel at the reactions I received from people who looked at them. At the nursing home, I reveled at the look of disgust on my peer's face or the occasional challenge from someone trying to top my grossness. Alcohol was also an almost nightly escape. Deep down I did not like who I was in those moments. Life was uncomfortable, and I was running from that feeling as fast as I could. The only thing about running is at some point you have to stop to catch your breath—and then life catches up again.

I am sure some of the people I cared for caught glimpses of my youthful struggles to cope. Could they see my tearstained face or sense my inner pain? Yet these people accepted me, even liked me, and many told me they appreciated my care. So many people riddled with disease, be it disease of the body or of the mind, their condition had condemned them to a life of dependency. For many it became a life of aloneness while they waited for help. Somehow these people all managed to give me something. It was deeper than a thank you or a smile. Even those unable to respond affected me. The more I cared for these people, the more I realized that they were no different from me. It wasn't the job I valued as much as the people who needed my care. They all had a past and a prime of life. Some had been financially successful, while others were chronically poor. Some were pleasant and others unpleasant. Some were grateful and kind, while others seemed nasty and hateful. Each person coped differently with the loss of who they knew themselves to be, all the while living in an environment which they would not have chosen. Many had families. Some had none left. Others had pushed everyone away. I don't know how I would cope in such conditions.

While assisting Elaine as she ate her half a sandwich for supper, she explained to me that she only ate half so she would not become too heavy for us to lift. I thought about what a wonderful gift this woman was giving us. This woman who has lost everything, except for the movement of her arms, which was fairly limited and deteriorating steadily, was giving something to us. It is one of the best gifts I have ever received.

I remember Marge returning to the nursing home after attending her son's funeral. She was a stout little woman with a friendly face. Sometimes she could be very confused, but not this day. She was dressed all in black: black hat, black dress, black stockings, and black shoes. She slowly walked as if there was a great weight on her soul. She went into her room and sat on the bed. I followed and sat on the bed beside her. I put my arm around her. She leaned in a little. I felt the gravity of her sadness. We just sat.

"I should have gone first," Marge said quietly. "Even at my age, this is so hard." A single tear rolled from the corner of her eye and softly meandered down one of the deep lines of life in her face, until it fell off her chin onto her black dress.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from True Empathy by Melissa Forgey. Copyright © 2015 Melissa Forgey. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Contents

Preface, vii,
Acknowledgments, ix,
Introduction, xi,
Part I - A Wealth of Humanity, 1,
Chapter 1 A New Journey, 3,
Chapter 2 Unexpected Connections, 12,
Chapter 3 People Who Suffer, 17,
Chapter 4 Journeys Will End, 21,
Part II - A Time to Reflect, 27,
Chapter 5 Everything Is All Right, 29,
Chapter 6 My Lost Years, 35,
Part III - A Time to Heal, 41,
Chapter 7 The Reconnection, 43,
Chapter 8 No Time, 47,
Part IV - A Changed Man, 51,
Chapter 9 A Complicated Man, 53,
Chapter 10 Struggle to Accept, 61,
Chapter 11 Long-Distance Good-Bye, 65,
Chapter 12 A Woman Released, 77,
Chapter 13 New Ground, 79,
Chapter 14 A Need to Be Home, 83,
Part V - Twenty Days for Charlotte, 89,
Chapter 15 Night at the ER, 91,
Chapter 16 Memories and Mourning Doves, 100,
Chapter 17 Mom's Last Stand, 112,
Chapter 18 Pulling Weeds, 117,
Chapter 19 Hesitant Surrender, 125,
Part VI - Aging Well, 131,
Chapter 20 Thoughts of Mom, 133,
Chapter 21 Thoughts of Dad, 136,
Chapter 22 No Reprieve, 139,
Chapter 23 Myself, Aging, and Margaret, 145,
Conclusion, 149,
About the Author, 153,