The Dying, The Living and Ob La Di
Down the hall of the nursing home that I visit, Mary, an old woman with flying white hair, pushes her wheelchair up and down the hallway yelling, “I gotta pee! I gotta pee!”
I don’t think she means it, but in here you never know.
In a room on the right, the TV is on and a woman sits in her chair staring vacantly into some other world. It’s not a happy world. She never smiles.
In the room up from her, a small black man lies on his bed with the lights out. Sometimes he’s on his back. Sometimes he turns on his side, I guess for the variety of views. In another room, a heavy woman with no underpants sits with her legs spread watching old variety shows. Lawrence Welk is on and Myron Floren is playing a polka on his accordion. He’s smiling as he pushes the bellows in and out. He’s always smiling. Myron could be fighting a hangover and stomach flu while playing a dirge and he’d be smiling.
Mary rides back down the hall yelling, “I wanna go home! I wanna go home!”
At the end of the hall, another heavy woman with no teeth pulls a spoon from her closed mouth and gums the strawberry ice cream. The woman beside her is asleep. In fact, here and there throughout the building, women are sleeping. Some are sitting. Some are lying down. Some have their eyes open.
The aides scurry back and forth answering call buttons. “Ethel in 206 has wet herself,” one aide says to another. “Can you clean her up?”
Along comes Mary again, this time holding the belt of a male aide as he tries to make his way down the hall. “Mary, you have to let go of me,” he says in a kind voice with just a trace of fear. He’s not sure what to do so he continues walking and pulling her. I can’t tell if she just wants a free ride or something more substantial.
“I gotta pee!” She yells as they make their way down the hall. “You gotta pee?”
“No, Mary. I don’t have to pee. Please let go of me.”
“I gotta pee!”
No matter how hard the aids work at sanitation, there’s always a faint smell of urine.
After my visit, I step into the sunshine. It’s one of those rare, warm, cloudless fall days with no breeze. The perfume of dying leaves plays in the nostrils and fill the lungs.
In the car I push in the CD “Leslie Fiedler and the Boston Pops Play The Beatles.” I bought it used for $3.99. At just the right moment, as I’m driving past fields of corn drooping a bit from the last frost, track 3 comes on with the orchestra playing Ob-Di-La Ob-La-Da, a fun polka type tune from their “White Album.”
In a 2004 BBC poll, Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da was voted one of the worst songs ever.
I don’t agree.
I stop at a farmer’s market and buy some ears of corn, fresh-picked apples and locally grown tomatoes that are deep red, heavy and firm.
I get back in the car and take a back road home. I punch track 3 again, appreciating my freedom of movement, the freedom to walk and drive wherever I want, taking deep breaths of the fresh air coming through the open window, reminded again that the moment is everything.
ob la di ob la da life goes on bra
la la how the life goes on
ob la di ob la da life goes on bra
la la how the life goes on
(When you have a chance visit my website, www.perfectsong.net and check out my novel The Perfect Song in both text and audio format. The cyber editions are free but if you’d like to send a contribution to the Perfect Song Scholarship Fund you can mail a check to “The Perfect Song Scholarship,” Mansfield University Foundation, Alumni House, Mansfield University, Mansfield, PA 16933)