I was driving to work when the first chords came drifting out of the car radio like a lullaby. And then Cass Elliot's haunting voice followed, singing the words I knew so well.
Stars shining bright above you
Night breezes seem to whisper, I love you
Birds singing in the sycamore tree
Dream a little dream of me
My wife never knew why the song made me cry every time I heard it, but my daughter did. And, as I listened to the beautiful melody, I thought of those long gone, like Walter, Mabel and, of course, Caroline.
Even though it was over twelve years ago, I still remember exactly where I was the first time I heard her voice. I was a twenty-year-old orderly at the Shadywood Care Home and I was leaning against the nursing station as I watched Walter try to make his daily escape.
Sara leaned over the nursing station counter and looked toward the front entrance. "I think you better grab Mr. Williams, Jason, he's almost there."
Walter Williams, who was in his late eighties, clutched the handrail to support himself as he shuffled slowly toward the front door of the care home. It usually took him the better part of half an hour to make his way from the far end of the hall to the main entrance, and now he was less than ten feet from freedom.
"Time to take him back to the starting line," I said, and headed down the hallway with his wheelchair.
As Walter heard me coming, he looked back over his shoulder and waved me away with his free hand. "No...leave me alone," he grumbled. "You can't keep me trapped in here!"
"Come on, Mr. Williams," I said, as I gently removed his hand from the handrail. "Time to get back in your wheelchair."
Walter had always been a big man. He had worked for the railway for decades and, by the time he'd retired twenty years earlier, was one of the most respected men in the company. But most of the people Walter had worked with were long gone, and he was a shadow of the man he'd once been. In his youth, he would have thrown me across the hall if I'd touched him. Now, he didn't even have the strength to push my arm away.
He pleaded with me and cursed at me as I gently but forcibly put him in his wheelchair and took him back to the end of the hall. After I'd locked the wheels and walked away, he lifted himself unsteadily to his feet, grabbed the handrail, and began his long half hour journey anew.
"I feel so sad for Walter," said Sara. "No one ever comes to visit him. Every day, he tries to leave, only to have us bring him back again."
"I don't blame him," I said. "I wish I could escape this place too."
"Shadywood isn't that bad. You haven't worked anywhere else, but some of the homes I've worked at...you wouldn't believe the smell. I like how it's clean here, and the residents are treated well."
"Maybe, but the pay sucks. I'm not even sure if its minimum wage. And Janet makes me work my ass off."
"I don't know about that," Sara teased, as she played with her necklace. "It still looks pretty good to me. But I know how you feel; I had to take a second job just to make ends meet. I'm working downtown Saturday night...maybe after I get off we can get together and do something?"
Before I could answer, she hurriedly continued. "It won't be a date or anything. I know every time I ask, you tell me you don't date people you work with. But I thought maybe we could go out sometime, you know, as friends?"
I was racking my brain for an excuse to say no, when Angie wandered up to the nursing station.
Angie, the head nurse, was a middle-aged Filipino woman with a heart of gold -- except for when it came to teasing Sara. "What are you two lovebirds whispering about?"
Sara turned red with embarrassment. "Angie! Jason and I aren't -- "
"I know, I am just kidding you Sara!" she said. "I need help moving the residents to bingo. I thought Michael was in today?"
"Janet had to lay him off," said Sara.
"Not another one," said Angie. "We are so short staffed as it is. If Janet wants to save money so badly, why doesn't she turn down this heat? It makes my poor skin so dry."
Angie took a jar of Vaseline out of her pocket and rubbed some on her cracked lips. "Bring your boyfriend, he can help us with the residents."
Sara blushed as I smiled and followed her to the elevator. She'd been working at Shadywood as a nursing aide for six months, and had a hopeless crush on me. Though cute and curvy with strawberry blonde hair, she was a year younger than me and still had some growing up to do. And she was right; I'd learned the hard way to never date anyone you worked with.
As we reached the elevator, more than a dozen residents milled aimlessly around it, some no longer remembering why they'd come downstairs in the first place.
I took one resident by his arm while Sara pushed another's wheelchair and we went to the activity room. As we neared it, we could hear someone singing in an unbelievably beautiful voice.
I turned to Sara, who was already watching me. "I thought it was bingo today? Did Janet restart the concert program?"
"No, as far as I know it's still cancelled."
We entered the room and saw her, moving through the residents as she sang, capturing them in her spell. She sang so beautifully, so confidently, that I thought she was a professional that had been hired to sing at the home. But she was dressed in a housecoat like every other resident.
I'd never seen them so quiet, they were completely fascinated as she moved amongst them singing, and touching each and every one of them with her voice. Some of the residents closed their eyes and swayed to the sound, lost in the memories the song rekindled from the embers of the past. I could see the joy on her face as she sang, and as she looked across the room and saw that I was also caught in her spell she smiled radiantly at me.
"Who is that?" I asked Sara.
"That's Mrs. Andrews, she's a new resident here."
"A resident? But she's too young. She's like...twenty years younger than anyone else."
"I know -- I think she's only sixty."
I went to get more of the residents from the elevator, but as I returned the singing stopped and there was a smattering of applause.
I looked through the door and saw Janet talking to Mrs. Andrews.
Janet was the administrator at Shadywood and, ironically, was probably the same age as Mrs. Andrews. She was a stickler for schedules and always hurried around the home with one eye on her watch. The recent budget cuts had put a lot of pressure on her, and she was struggling to maintain a semblance of order at the home.
Janet sat Mrs. Andrews down, gave her a bingo card, and signaled to the caller to start the game. Mrs. Andrews smiled back at me, shrugged her shoulders, and waited for the first number.
I didn't see her again until later that night, as I was taking the residents back upstairs after dinner. Mabel was missing, and Angie asked if I could help find her.
Mabel Gardner was a lovely woman, eighty-five years young, who always had a smile on her face. She wandered the halls of Shadywood endlessly, as she thought she was an employee there, not a resident. And if you asked her how she'd got to work that day she could tell you the bus number, which seat she'd sat in and, sometimes, the bus driver's name. I had no way of knowing if her information was accurate, as she was remembering a bus trip she'd taken sixty years earlier.
Mabel also had an amazing memory for minute details from when she was a child, including the name of the horse that she'd loved to ride around the farm she'd grown up on. But she couldn't remember the names of her family, or that they'd even existed. First she'd forgotten her grandchildren, and then her children, and now she no longer remembered her husband. Her memory had been torn away like pages from the back of a book, with only the beginning left.
