The dinky room is sweltering yet balmy coming from the radiant heat of the antediluvian stone fireplace nearby. Mother and Father are assiduously reviewing their meager finances just few weeks before their 14-day journey by ship to the Americas. There, Enriqueta will finish school and eventually attend college to become a teacher, a dream she wants to chase with unabashed passion. She will be the first ever in the family to leave this tiny village on the island of Sicily, Italy and receive a formal education.
As the years pass by, this only child of Italian immigrants graciously enjoys an extremely long and fully rewarding career heartily teaching literature. At times, she surprisingly finds herself teaching the children of her previous students. Her face radiantly and enthusiastically reflects with much pride each time her former students accidentally stop by to tell her about their fruitful accomplishments.
After years of teaching, she has masterfully built an incessant life-long and indelible friendships. She takes habitual daily walks, determinatively stopping to visit with the neighborhood grocer to belligerently haggle over the price of his newly hauled fresh bread. Every Sunday, she attends church with her amiable family and loyal friends. Her primary physician is a former obliging student who once convincingly wrote a very powerful essay about how he strongly wanted to fortunately grow up and "be a respectable doctor and take care of old helpless lonely elderly people."
She excitedly looks forward to her retirement when she can spend her wonderful days writing important solid memoirs of her childhood in Sicily and her unforgettable and memorable journey to America. However, the unanticipated arrival of Alzheimer's disease cuts her retirement short and cheats her existence all of a sudden. Little-by-little, she gradually notices that things do not seem to make sense anymore and seems extremely strange and odd. Enthusiastically devoted to her esteemed profession and her beloved students, Enriqueta had no children and never tried to get married. Her wonderful life revolved around her students, her books, and her church.
Now residing in the special care Alzheimer's unit, in a well known nursing care center in Hollywood, is a difficult and bitter adjustment for her, filled with unassuming doubts, unknown fears, and forlorn reluctance. The hundreds of collected books she had in her home have now become a neat stack of six on a small bedside table, arranged in alphabetical order by author. The top drawer is full of unopened cards and letters from former students wishing her well. Big numbered calendar and an enormous round wall clock adorned the wall at the foot of the bed for her to see.
An old faded black and white photograph of Enriqueta and her doting parents, taken just few days before their expeditionary trip to America, hangs on the wall next to her bed. A bright ceiling light over the single bed remains lit after remaining on throughout the long, lonely cold night. For the first time in her life, Enriqueta must share her space with someone else. It is confusing and frightening at times, but she tries to adjust and cooperate. She continues to smile with those noticeable dimples and bright dreamy eyes, although her face is laced with wrinkles at her fragile age of eighy-seven.
In the morning, the staff helps Enriqueta choose her outfit to wear for the day. They remind her to come to breakfast in the dining room. She routinely makes a stop to use the bathroom, slowly washes her hands in the sink, and then cautiously retrieves her hairbrush from her customized top dresser drawer. As she brushes her wavy, brittle silver hair, she regularly sees the staff hustling and bustling past her door providing breakfast and daily care to all of the residents.
Her 5 foot and 2 inch frame, perfectly groomed, and dressed conservatively in a light blue skirt, wearing discretely her pantyhose and shoes, topped with a white blouse, and cream colored cardigan, walks painstakingly into the hall. When someone had unconsciously spilled coffee on the dirty-white-colored vinyl floor, the haggard looking Enriqueta sluggishly bends over to clean it up with her white-embroidered handkerchief. She suddenly slips and fell on her right side, seriously fracturing and injuring her right arm. She immediately returns from the emergency room wearing a thick-looking immobilizer and a hugging sling. Upon arrival she is then transferred to the non-dementia unit in the same care center.
Two weeks had pass by, the feeble-looking Enriqueta loses eight pounds and the smile has inescapably left her wrinkly face. Her eyes were a dull stare, void of emotions, which appears expressionless and had no affect at all. She quietly sits in her wheelchair equipped with a self-release belt restraint and wears an uncomfortable incontinent brief under a pair of bright pink (her favorite color) soft velour sweatpants that are marked "Victoria Secret" across the waist. The wheelchair is permanently locked as she unassumingly sits across from the deserted nursing station, next to others in a semi-circle formation, all lazily and nonchalantly dozing in their respective wheelchairs.
Several core staff members passed by, but there is no active interaction or even a bit chance of coincidental eye contact observed, not even a hint of validation that those peacefully sitting residents lining up in their wheelchairs were actually existing at the corner. While she may be able to personally propel the wheelchair around the care center unassisted in the past, it is now temporarily locked and she is unable to unlock it by herself at that moment due to generalized body weakness. She appears defeated and helpless at that instance.
Across the hallway, a petite young fairly-complexioned nurse is on the phone intently talking with Enriqueta's physician, "Citalopram 100 milligrams, PO daily for depression. Lorazepam 1 milligram, IM PRN prior to care delivery for anxiety. Change dressing on coccyx pressure ulcer every other day. Is that correct doctor?" And so it begins...... loneliness, darkness, helplessness, worthlessness, and boredom... until she drifted away and couldn't remember everything.
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