I thought everyone might like to know why I put 'loneliness' on here a while back as a topic. This is what started me thinking about it.

A couple of years ago after not working as a nurse for a very long time I was recruited to a short term job relieving a friend who is Director of Nurses at a nursing home.
I was half afraid to do it because my nursing skills are very rusty. But my friend assured me that all they needed was someone with a nursing license and that my knowledge of nursing theory would compensate for my rusty skills.
I was alone a lot at that time had been searching for something worthwhile to do so I took the job for a couple of months while my friend took some much needed time off.
Every day as I drove to the nursing home I was terrified that I would do something wrong. In the car on the way to work, I prayed that I would not do any thing to hurt anyone then I prayed that I be a blessing to someone that day.
The facility was nice, but I have never seen such profound loneliness. I'm pretty sure it's the reason people don't want to be there or even work there. People seemed to sit around all day just waiting to die.
I fell in love with the patients. I tried to give each one special attention, especially the difficult ones whose family never visited, but the work was very demanding and there was just not enough time to listen. I tried to smile a lot and listen when I could.
The moment I entered the building, the patients would gather around all talking at once trying to get my attention. They seemed to be so desperate to be heard and they wanted to be touched. I tried to take each one's hand, but even that was interrupted by the demands of the job.
Eating was about the only thing they had to look forward to. There was a total of eighty patients and they waited in groups of forty in front of my desk for an hour for dinner. That was the time allotted for charting, but the patients seemed so lonely. They just stared off into space waiting.
One day, one of the patients told me it was her birthday so I tried to get everyone to sing Happy Birthday to her. When no one would sing, I sang alone. I sing pretty badly, but I sang loudly. At first no one joined in, but eventually I talked a couple of patients into singing with me and I praised them so highly that a couple of others decided to sing too.
I sang directly into the ears of patients who couldn't hear and soon more of them wanted to sing along so we sang the Birthday song, which was the only one everybody knew, again and again. We wound up singing Happy Birthday for almost an hour.
The next day when I came into the facility, the patients immediately began asking me if we were going to sing again. They all said they had not been sung the birthday song on their birthday so when they were all gathered around my desk, we sang Happy Birthday to every one of them and anyone else we could find.
Within a week or so almost all those who could speak were singing Happy Birthday and we began to expand into a few familiar choruses. They greeted me at the door with song requests and we sang anything anyone could remember. I began to sing directly into the ears of the patients who were paralyzed, even those who were confined to stretchers and couldn't talk.
The more I sang to them, the more they tried to join in and after a while, even some of the ones who couldn’t move their bodies or talk began to sing. I was amazed. Their voices were weak and their words were garbled, but they were singing.
I got some discarded hymnals from a church and I began to lead them in singing the old hymns. We sang a whold medley of patriotic songs on the Fourth of July and Happy Birthday every day. We sang it to anyone who didn’t object. I told them that anyone who let us sing Happy Birthday to them when it was not their birthday, got to take a year off their age.
They sang Happy Birthday to me so many times that pretty soon, in more ways than one, I was practically a child.
One day one of the patients wanted me to tell a joke so I began telling jokes and a few of them told some jokes. I began to look for jokes online and would yell them into the ears of the half deaf patients. Many couldn't hear well enough to get the punch lines and most just laughed out of politeness, but they laughed.
The staff who had teased me about singing with the patients began to sing along with us and when the jokes started, they began to ‘gong’ me when I told a bad one. Pretty soon the patients were gonging me too and then they began gonging each other and even themselves. Everyone was laughing and singing so much they didn‘t want to go to dinner and would try to stay around with the next group so I made a rule that they had to eat in order to sing.
We sang for an hour every day and it meant I had to work over time to finish my charting, but the singing and the laughter really energized me.
I began to look forward to going to the facility, but still every day on my way to work I prayed that I not harm anyone and I als prayed that I be a blessing to someone that day.
Pretty soon, I noticed myself singing on the way home and I realized that it was me who had been blessed.

About the time the Director of Nurses returned to work my father became ill and I had to leave, but I still visit the nursing home occasionally and I sing with them if I can. I still sing terribly, but they don’t seem to mind and it is still a great blessings to me just to be there.
smile

[ June 02, 2004, 09:07 PM: Message edited by: smilinize ]