Iggy and I just got back from our PALS visit. I really didn't want to go today. I had a headache, and it was so cold outside. But, as Don put it, I had made a promise. And of course I couldn't overlook the irony of it all. Relative to a headache and the temperature outside is life on the inside, no hope of parole.
Nameless lady: strapped into a wheelchair. For good measure, held in by an attached table over which she leans, trying to pull herself up and out. Every time I look at her, she's making eye contact. "Help me. Help me." As on the last visit and the one before that, I go over and hold her hand. She clings to mine, and gives me background information, none of which sounds good. "They're all dead," she says, and she could be referring to something in her past or to the room we're in right now. I don't talk to her because I don't know what to say that might help. I think she just wants out.
Helen: new, and sitting by herself in a hallway nook. She keeps falling down, she says. Her family and her dog live in Mackenzie Town, and she has no idea why they put her here. She can't bear to go to the main sitting room, because it's so sad. "I just don't fit in here," she says. We tell her we'll be back in two weeks and we'll keep our fingers crossed that she'll be back in Mackenzie Town. I'm thinking she couldn't be too hard to look after because she's so tiny. If she were my mother I'd just take her home with me.
Tawnia: Native, looks about 35. In a wheelchair by the door. A volunteer says to her, "Too cold to to outside for a smoke today, right?" Tawnia says, "I've been out three times already." Volunteer: "I wouldn't do it." Tawnia: "Well, you ain't got any Indian in ya."
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