nursing home

Aren't balloons the most delightful and affordable impractical indulgence in life?

This post is supposed to be about the nursing home for elderly and disabled folks I volunteered at yesterday. But I can't help putting this nicely-angled picture of happiness as the main event picture. Am I the only one who gets tipsily high-ish around helium balloons without even inhaling the helium?

Anyways, the event was alright, even though it felt like a huge party rather than a heartfelt visit. The group I went with was better-funded than some, and we had thundering sound systems (plus a karaoke set), free t-shirts for painting, free picture frames and instant photos etc. I didn't stay for the afternoon half because I hitched my ride.

My partner Sweet-Azreen and I was focusing on this amicable (and very chatty) granny, Alice. She painted a castle/villa on her t-shirt because she really, really wants her own home rather than staying at the nursing home.

Alice then launched into a story of how she's supposed to be queen but her husband had many more wives whom he forced into prostitution so she fought with him and was sent away to this home 3 months ago. She hated this home because (1) she lost her rightful residence (2) the workers there do hit the inmates (3) some of the inmates were sent there to kill her. I don't know which parts of her story are real. But a worker did try to eavesdrop on what Alica was telling Azreen and I in hushed tones. And it could be my imagination running wild but he didn't dare meet my eyes when I stared at him as Alice pointed him out as the person her husband "sold" her to. What does "sold" mean? Is she just rambling?

What actually happens behind the scene in nursing homes, I wonder. Alice wasn't the only one complaining that the workers hit/pinch/hurt her. Are they old and lonely and tend to create stories just to get out of the nursing home, or things that shouldn't happen really happened?