The balance of ALF.
The glasses are fake, but the sign isn't. We had a 'Wild West' themed month, and we took 'ALF's Most Wanted' photos. This is one of the few pictures I have of him.
I walked past the bingo players confidently, but hesitated outside the door to his apartment. I really didn’t want to do this, but it would be better to get it over with. I took a deep breath, knocked, and twisted the doorknob when I heard her voice say, ‘Come in.’
She was sitting by his bed eating her lunch while sorting papers, and didn’t get up when I entered the room, which was a relief. I didn’t want her to hug me; I wouldn’t be able to get through this if she hugged me.
‘How are you?’ I asked. ‘Good,’ she answered. ‘Actually, quite good. I was here. And he wasn’t in pain, and I could see that. So I’m really good.’ I breathed a deep sigh out and told her how glad I was to hear that, and to know that she’d been there.
‘I just found out when I came into the office this morning,’ I confessed. ‘I didn’t get the email. I was so sorry to hear…I thought he had more time.’ I trailed off, not knowing what to say.
‘Me too,’ she replied. We sat a moment in silence, and then she started showing me some pictures of him when he was younger. ‘Daddy loved to hunt. Oh look, here he is in the military. Here’s his high school picture – doesn’t he just look so handsome?’
I nodded and smiled, still not sure what to say, and worried that if I spoke I’d start crying. I remembered a phone conversation a few days ago where she had called and asked me if we did anything for Memorial Day. I’d said no, but that we had a big Flag Day celebration planned in June, and that I remembered how much her dad enjoyed that last year. We’d paused for a moment on the phone, both thinking the same thing, neither willing to say it out loud. ‘I’ll make sure he’s there,’ I finally ventured. ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Yes, he’d like to be there.’
We looked through a few more photos, and then I said I’d let her get back to her lunch and all the sorting and organizing she had to do. As I moved toward the door, she stood up and said, ‘You know, Daddy really liked you.’ I felt the tears finally coming, and I didn’t even bother trying to stem them. ‘You meant a lot to him. He may not have been good with names, but he certainly knew you.’ She smiled at me. ‘Six-foot-two-eyes-of-blue. Sometimes he would shorten it to six-foot-blue, but I always knew he meant you.’
‘I loved your dad,’ I told her. ‘I love all my residents, but I really loved your dad. He had me wrapped around his finger.’ She hugged me, and I wiped my tears and left his apartment, purposefully not looking back at his bed with his green blanket he always had wrapped around him lying on top.
There are two schools of thought – one is that it’s a part of the job, and you have to desensitize yourself so you can remain emotionally healthy enough to get back to work. I recently told an older colleague who works at another ALF that I’ll never not be affected by a resident’s death. ‘That’s what I said, too,’ he snidely replied. ‘You’ll get there. Give it time, and it won’t affect you.’
The other is that if you are affected by losing a resident, you’re probably in the right career. When I was in his apartment for the last time, his daughter told me how touched the rest of her family was when they saw how choked up staff were at his passing. ‘They really loved him,’ they’d mused to her. I smiled to myself when she told me that. Yes, we really loved him. I really loved him. And still, I left his apartment and went back to work. All of life is a balance, and this is the teeter-totter I’ve chosen to wobble on.
