JB AND AUDIE

JB is my friend!

His wife Audie, died last week and my friend is alone.  So terribly, terribly alone! 

JB and Audie, husband and wife, shared a double room in the nursing home in which my wife Naoma has been a resident for quite some time now.  I got to know this lovely couple while pushing Naoma down the hallway past their room to a glassed in wall where she could look watch the birds and flowers outside in the garden. This is Naoma’s favorite spot in the whole place.  Naoma has Alzheimers and I usually visit her at least twice a day.  Once in the morning and once again in the afternoon.

Naoma’s condition has taken her well beyond walking, talking, mobility, reasoning, memory and understanding; yet, she is reasonably content.  Somehow she enjoys most of her waking moments and I have learned to share her joy, limited as it may be, as I push her to visit other residents along the hallways that have been identified with individual street names.  We literally visit dozens of residents each day during our tour.

JB and Audie became one of the favorite stops on our daily tours.  Our friendship began to gel when JB and I discovered that we both worked with the same general contractor in and around the K-25 area of Oak Ridge, Tennessee in 1944 and 1945.  He enjoyed, and still does, the swapping of memories and reminiscing of old times and old places, in a time that was, in an era that will never be forgotten.  

We had been visiting JB and Audie only a few short weeks when we noticed by actual observation and through our conversations that very few visitors came to visit them even though they had maintained a local residence and apparently had been members of a local church.  As a matter of fact, for the first six or eight months I can only recall two visitor that came by to see them.  One was their daughter that visited fairly regularly and an occasionally a visit by his pastor.  I often wondered why, but as our visits extended to more and more of the residents I began to realize that this was a very common occurrence.

I once observed an elderly lady standing in the doorway of her room waiting for her daughter to come by to see her.  She waited in the doorway from Monday until Thursday before her daughter came by.  When the daughter finally showed up she didn’t even go into the room.  She talked to her mother in the doorway.  She briefly informed her mother that she looked good and that the people in the nursing home was really taking good care of her.  Then, the daughter looked at her watch, allowed that she was running late for her hair appointment, kissed her mother on her cheek and took off down the hall.

It was all I could do to stop myself from going after the daughter, force her into her mothers room  and demand that she talk to her mother for the rest of the day.  Instead, I placed my arm around the old lady’s shoulders as the tears welled up in the mother’s eyes.  

Almost a year ago JB and Audie learned that she was suffering with terminal cancer.  By the time they began to cope with this terrible news their one and only visitor, their daughter, suffered a fatal heart attack.  Audie was in the hospital for a few days and JB went to their daughters funeral without her.  Someone picked him up and immediately returned him to the nursing home after the ritual was over.   Audie got better and came back to the nursing home.  In the meantime, Naoma and I continued our visits, sometimes twice daily. This was the last time I observed any visitors until his pastor came the day after Audie died.

Audie died Thursday night.  I sat with JB Friday morning and in the afternoon so that he would not be alone.  None of his grandchildren or friends from his church failed to show that I know of, however when I got to the nursing home Saturday morning JB had been picked up and taken to Audie’s funeral.  
   
Naoma and I were looking out the window into the garden when they brought JB back from the funeral.  He nodded to me as they went by and proceeded to his room down the hall.  There were five adult people, well dressed and very prosperous looking.  Within ten minutes four of them, two men and two women came back down the hall, exited at the front door and drove away.

Another granddaughter was with JB as I stopped by his room.  The attendant was changing JB’s clothes and I told him I would drop in to see him later.  The granddaughter proceeded to collect her grandmother’s processions and personal effects and within a very short time left JB by himself.  I went back and stayed with him that afternoon.

Naoma and I have continued our visits twice daily.  We have seen no visitors as of yet!
 
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I am saddened at Audie’s death and yet I am angry. Very angry!  I believe that I have properly identified my anger as righteous indignation.  An anger that is sanctioned by the actions of Jesus Christ when the rage within himself came boiling to the surface and he quite literally overturned the tables of the money exchangers in the Temple.

Anger is a gift from God.  A gift of learning, to repudiate the moral wrongs, especially our sins of omission that we blame on someone else but never to ourselves. But we must learn to use our anger appropriately and in the right times and in the right places.  Righteous indignation is an entity deep down within our soul, seldom directed at any one person, yet demanding universal action.  This is what I have been experiencing.

In my opinion this is the right time and this is the right place. 

My story of my relations with JB and Audie is unique.  It is not encumbered by the usual dishonesty of outside interference by other parties simply because there were none.  The relationship was and still is honest and reflects only those things that I observed!  Neither am I trying to place individual blame because some of our sins require universal condemnation.

What we allowed to happen to JB and Audie is the product of a collective moral wrong.  A sin to be reckoned with!

We congregate in our individual houses of worship and give our God one or two hours of   our weekly ration of time.  Our hairdresser or barber often gets more time.  We fail to understand the simplicity of what He requires of us.  To love our God with all our heart, with all our body and with all our soul and to love our neighbor as we love our self!  That is it.  The rest is commentary!

However, when we fail at this simple task, we deserve the wrath of an angry God!

Should not universal condemnation be extended to every member of every church in this community simply because we failed in our duty to respond to the needs of a lovely elderly couple, our neighbor, in their hour of need.

You be the judge!

As for me!  I am just liable, if the old lady’s daughter comes back and does this again, just stop her right there in front of God and all witnesses and demand that she take her mother into her room and talk to her all afternoon!