We drive by elder care facilities all the time, and they seem quite and uneventful, but if you spend some time there, you can discover the wild happenings inside.
I was very surprised yesterday when I an into Sylvie and Madeline coming out of the activity’s room. With my camera – the residents love to be photographed – I am not the chronicler of special deeds. “Jon,” announced Sylvie in her very formal way.
“I think you should take a picture of this.” I was puzzled. “What am I taking a picture of, aside from two wonderful women?”
Sylvie smiled and put arm around Madeline, who is 94 this year.
“I’m adopting Madeline,” Sylvie said. Sylvie is generally serious and reserved. I was a bit taken aback.
Both of them were beaming.
I remembered. Of course. Madeline witnessed her brother stab her father to death when she was five, the family fell apart and she, the youngest in an Italian-American Catholic family, was sent to a Jewish orphanage in the Bronx where she spent the next 13 years of her life, and learned a fair amount of Yiddish, which pops up at odd times in her conversation from time to time.
She was never adopted from the orphanage.
Sylvie, in her 70’s, was the daughter of American diplomats assigned to Europe in the grim years after World War II. She suffered two severe nervous breakdowns which altered the course of her life and sent her into a lifetime of institutional care. She has had other health issues in recent years.
Sylvia is a devout Jehovah’s Witness and is busy in prayers and letter writing on behalf of the church. She heard Madeline tell her story the other day in our story-telling workshop and she offered to adopt her. Madeline was deeply affected by the idea and the two just held one another out in the hallway for a bit, an unusual show of emotion for either of them.
I was very privileged to be there to record this event and I volunteered to photograph the ceremony. Some interesting times at the Mansion, just the other day, I photographed the beginning of the Wonderful Ladies Club. I think Sylvie just joined.
I was wandering the halls of the Mansion Assisted Care Facility Friday, looking for volunteers to act in our “Night Of Four Skits” on April 4. I ran into Madeline and Joan, two of my favorite friends at the Mansion. They were both laughing and making noise and dancing with one another, and I said “what is going on here?”
And they both stopped, and said at the same time. “we are Wonderful Ladies and this is the Wonderful Ladies Club.”
“Are you dancing?,”I asked. “Of course,” said Madeline, “can’t you see? Take our picture!” I needed no additional encouragement, and I much-loved the joy and connection between these two.
They look out for one another.
“I think it’s about wonderful…or something,” said Joan, smiling.
They are, in fact, wonderful ladies.
“How long has this club been around?,” I asked. “Oh, about three minutes,” said Madeline.
Madeline is in her 90’s and she is fierce warrior for thinking, singing, writing and culture, this, she says, is because she comes from New York City. She admits to being a bit of a New York City snob. “After all,” she says haughtily, “they have the Yankees there.”
Joan and I are working on her memory and having much fun and success, we are reading together, her memory is reasserting itself.
But I loved the spirit of these two, these proud, undaunted, determined women, struggling every day to lead a meaningful and loving life. People tend to write off the elderly, content to keep them out of sight, as our culture pushes them out of sight, happy to keep them alive for profit, but not willing to think much about how they will live their lives.
They are lucky to be in the Mansion. That is the best place I have seen.
Some, I see, are broken by this process, and surrender to it. Others never do.
I asked Madeline and Joan if they wished to continue the idea of the Very Wonderful Ladies Club – their memory is not always on the surface. I volunteered to remind them in case they got distracted or it slipped their minds. I can already picture the dances and parties.
Good ideas can fade at the Mansion, there are so many things to do first. Both of these wonderful ladies have signed up to be in our play,”Night Of Four Skits.”
“Please,” said Madeline. “Oh yes,” said Joan. “We are wonderful ladies.”
You can write to Madeline or Joan c/o The Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12818. As a rule, Joan cannot read or respond to your letters, but they will be read to her and sometimes, she can reply. She loves getting them.
I did a casting call at the Mansion Friday for “A Night Of Four Skits,” to be performed in the Mansion Great Room on Wednesday, April 4th, at 6 p.m. The skits are all published by reading2connect, a publishing house specializing in books that promote memory, voice and reading for the elderly.
All of the skits were written for older people by Bi-FOLKal Productions.
I’ve purchased a score of books from reading2connect and its researcher/authors Susan Ostrowski and Peter Diamond. The skits themselves are in the mail.
I came into the Mansion at lunch and announced the plan to perform “Four Skits” for the residents and their families and friends in April. I am getting eight skit books from reading2connect and will cast four people to read and perform the mini-plays, they are all short and direct.
I am producing and directing the skits, Maria has offered to help, I have accepted.
There was a lot of interest at the Mansion today in being cast for “Four Skits.” Peggie, Tim, Allan, Sylvie (once I promised she could have the script with her) and I think I will invite Joan and read her part. She very much wants to be in one of the four skits, all different subjects ranging from a doctor’s visit to the arrival of winter.
I’m thinking of a possible set and lighting. Mansion Director Morgan Jones is considering inviting the community.
Madeline is extremely eager to act in the play, she lived for many years in New York, and she played the role of Linda, Willy Loman’s wife, in “Death Of A Salesman” several times in community theater. I told her we would make her a star, and she said she was delighted.
“Count me in,” she said, “I would love to be a star. This is a wonderful thing to be doing here.”
I told her she had the presence of a star, and she posted for a show photo or poster. She loved having her photo taken. Madeline is in her 90’s, when I ran into her ten minutes later, she asked me to repeat the casting offer. I did. She accepted it again.
People sometimes ask me if the Mansion residents are suffering from Dementia, and I must confess to hating that term. The Mansion is not a memory care or dementia facility, Red and I have worked in those, and they are very different. The term is offensive to me, I have not yet met any demented people in my therapy work, certainly not at the Mansion.
People associate the term with “demented,” which means “an adjective describing behavior that is crazy, unhinged, or insane.”
When I look at the news from Washington, or meet the ideological fanatics of the left or the right, I usually see well-dressed and educated men and woman I consider to be demented, but I never see anyone at the Mansion who would fit that description. In our country, we get our labels screwed up.
Dementia is a persistent disorder of the mental processes caused by brain disease or injury and marked by memory disorders, personality changes and severely impaired reasoning. Dementia patients are usually confined between coded and locked doors.
The Mansion residents are in assisted care, not dementia units, they are free to come and go as they please, they make their own decisions about time and activities, and they take care of themselves, that is a condition of being accepted to the Mansion.
When humans are seen that way – as demented – , and locked away from other people, unseen and unknown, it is a simple thing for the rest of society to ignore them. They know when they are left behind and forgotten. That transcends words.
I want to make these people known by their words and images, so they can’t be ignored, and are not ignored. Madeline is an impressive woman, she saw her brother stab her father to death, and grew up in orphanages in the Bronx. She projects great feeling and passion.
Madeline is a exciting first cast member. If I could have conjured her up, I would have.
She is articulate, funny and quite a ham.
She has acted before. We are off to a good start, I’ll firm up the others next week. I think the biggest fear I see among the residents is being embarrassed or failing in public. It’s my job to see that doesn’t happen, I will be right there with them to offer help if needed, not otherwise.
“Love it,” Susan Ostrowski wrote me this morning when she read about the skits. “I love every bit of it! You will see qualities of these people not seen in a long time.
She gave me some tips to consider. Read through the skits with the different residents reading them, and switch roles back and forth. Repeat and prompt as often as needed. Go through it again, switching roles with the actors. Place the actors comfortably close and facing each other, rather than facing me or any staff member. Positioning, she said, makes all of the difference.
The message I want to send as the producer and director isn’t “I want you to focus on me,” but “You can do this, you don’t need me.” Physical positioning determines which message the residents receive.
Next week, we chose the cast. Then, we start rehearing. I’d love to have some kind of set or background or spotlight, that won’t be easy. More later.
I was delighted to see Madeline, a 93 year old resident of the Mansion, and Door Lisa, a staffer there, dancing to “Blue Moon” in the activity room, laughing and hugging each other. Madeline grew up in the Bronx, she was moved to an orphanage there when her brother stabbed her father to death to prevent him from harming their mother. Her mother died soon afterwards and Madeline spent much of her young life in institutions.
She is cheerful, alert and loves to sing. Every time I see her, she tells me Red’s collar is too tight. Door Lisa loves to dance, and loves her work there.
I’ve asked Madeline a dozen times if she wanted an air conditioner for her room, and she has always said the same thing: “no, I don’t need one, get one for somebody else.” A staffer told me this week that Madeline’s room was one of the warmest in the Mansion, it catches the sun all day long, it is on one of the corners.
“She’ll never ask for anything,” said the staffer, “she’s always thinking of somebody else.”
I knocked on Madeline’s door and asked her again today if she needed a portable air condition. “No,” she said, “I was raised in an orphanage, I can take care of myself.”
Then I tried a different tack, I was sweating the minute I walked in there, and I saw that she was sweating also.
“Madeline,” I said. “Listen, I’m buying you a portable window air conditioner. It’s coming in two days. I just wanted you to know. It’s all paid for. And we are taking care of the other people who need one, also, one by one.”
I smiled. Madeline smiled. “Thank you,” she said, and came over to give me a hug. Then I was told Bill’s room on the other side was also very hot, and I knocked and went in and asked him if he needed an air conditioner, I assured him it would be paid for.
He was lying in bed, taking a nap. “I would really appreciate one,” he said, quietly, almost disbelieving that it would be that simple.
So two more air conditioners coming, I just found out about these two today, I see I have to work to do, it’s not as simple as taking a survey. The people at the Mansion have great pride, they have worked all of their lives and value their independence, they are simply not use to getting things for free. And sometimes, they worry that they will have to pay for the things they get.
It has been more difficult than I thought. But I am getting there. I am willful.
The Mansion air conditioning project is moving forward, one room at a time. I see I will have to go to each room and ask each resident, it’s the only way I can be certain I will get one to everyone who needs one. My sense of it is that there are only two or three more rooms that need one. So I’m ordering two more portable LG 8,000 BTU units.
I learned of one other resident, a woman, who is struggling with the heat. She also told me she didn’t need one, but others might.
I have enough money to pay for these two, if you wish to donate money to support the Mansion residents, you can send a check to Jon Katz at Post Office Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y. Please earmark it for the Mansion Air Conditioners, you can also send a donation via Paypal, my ID is [email protected].
You can write Madeline c/o Madeline, The Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.
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