Defying Death in Hagerstown

by John Paul Carinci

  The landscaping around the nursing home was beautiful. The various colorful flowers and neatly trimmed shrubbery made it a very attractive place for its residents to relax outside and admire it all. I studied the residents as I approached the building. None seemed uncomfortable or in any kind of pain. Indeed, most seemed content. Many had someone, family or staff, accompanying them.

  As I continued to observe, I tried to imagine myself in a home similar to this one. I imagined what it would be like to know I might never be released to live freely on my own again. It felt strange to me and somewhat sad as I pictured myself unable to ever leave. Oh, sure, many people do recuperate and ultimately rehab, and are released. But as I looked around, I knew most of these people would never be able to leave. I stared. I wondered.

  As I walked past the residents, many smiled at me and said, “Hello,” just hoping I would strike up a conversation with them. I felt bad that I couldn’t. I could see how easily one could become a volunteer in a home like this, giving hope, attention, and love to many in need of a little extra compassion.

  I walked through the entranceway and signed the guest register, filling in the purpose of my visit. First, I was to meet the director of admissions, Jeremy Roberts. A young lady escorted me and introduced me to Mr. Roberts.

  “Ah, Mr. Gerhani, I have been expecting you.”

  “Am I late?”

  “No, right on time,” he said with a warm smile. “But it’s not every day that our facility is graced with a reporter from the great Washington, DC, and as fine a newspaper as the Washington Gazette.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Roberts, but we’re just a friendly little newspaper looking for newsworthy stories, and your town’s Miss Lolita Croome is a very worthy story indeed.”

  “Yes, Miss Lolita is one very special and unique person. We treasure her every day. I’d venture to say that there has been no one in all of Maryland, or even the United States, like Miss Lolita She is probably sharper and has a better memory than both of us combined. And don’t try to outshine her in a trivia contest; she’ll run circles around you!” He smiled.

  “What is her secret to such longevity?” I asked the pressing question I had been pondering for many hours.

  “Well, many people want the magic potion that has kept Miss Lolita going for more years than ninety-nine percent of all the people in the world. And studying Miss Lolita for so long now, I have come to a certain conclusion.”

  “And that would be?” I waited patiently, my notepad and pen at the ready.

  “Well, the way I see it, Miss Lolita loves life. She loves people, and she never holds a grudge. She never has a negative thought or gets angry at anyone. But most importantly, Miss Lolita lives to help others unselfishly. She will go to great lengths to get into someone’s head and truly help them to help themselves. And over the years she has improved many people’s lives by offering encouragement, motivation, and, most importantly, pure love.” He had a distant look in his eyes, like he was digging deep inside for the words.

  I interrupted him. “The Wise One?”

  “Ah, yes, and most certainly, the Wise One.”

  “It is amazing. People are living so much longer these days.” I shook my head.

  “Medical technology today is magnificent,” Mr. Roberts added. “Medications can extend life far longer than ever. We have more residents who have achieved the milestone of one hundred than ever before. And the truly amazing thing is, they are far sharper than a centenarian from years back. Oh, sure, many residents who are nearing one hundred have senility. We will always have that, but we have over twenty who are one hundred or better. But no one here has made it to Lolita’s milestone of that amazing one hundred ten,” he boasted, as I scribbled notes.

  Mr. Roberts proudly gave me a tour of his facility, because Lolita was at her hour-long physical therapy session; she was scheduled for at least three times per week. I was somewhat surprised that a person of her age could do any physical therapy. But Roberts advised me that it was not the same physical therapy a younger person would partake in. Miss Lolita’s physical therapy might consist of arm and leg movements, and walking with the help of a walker and a therapist, as she was otherwise confined to a wheelchair. And she would perform movements of all of her joints and some muscle flexes.

  We continued our tour of the dining area, the lobby, and the kitchen. Everyone I met was outgoing and very compassionate toward the residents. Overall, the nursing home seemed like a pleasant place to reside if one had the need for the specialty care and rehabilitation provided there.

  Next, Mr. Roberts took me to the most sought-out place of all, where the residents and their families often gathered when visiting with one another: the garden sunroom. It was a lovely room—bright from the sun that streamed in through the overhead glass panels and from the array of beautiful flowers and plants that decorated the space. The room was filled with residents and their families and friends who were visiting. Many were admiring and commenting on the varieties of colorful flowers.

  I studied these people carefully, noting the many smiles and the calming effect the room seemed to have on everyone. It was a form of therapy, I thought, as I walked through the very large room with Mr. Roberts. There were very old and frail people, as well as younger, incapacitated residents, and it all affected me. I walked past a resident of maybe forty strapped into a wheelchair, and he spoke to me. He asked me for something, but I couldn’t understand him. He asked again.

  Mr. Roberts said that his name was Ken, and that he was a little hard to understand. Once again, Ken spoke to me, but Mr. Roberts helped me out, saying, “Ken wants you to lift his leg and rest it on the wheelchair footrest.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling quite foolish. “Sure, Ken,” I smiled as I tried, with difficulty, to lift the man’s leg. After about fifteen seconds, I was able to place his foot onto the footrest of his wheelchair, which clearly made Ken more comfortable. Total dead weight, and heavy—that was Ken’s leg.

  “Ken has a brain injury from a car accident he had when he was nineteen years old. He was thrown from the car. Ken has no use of almost anything but his fingers and facial muscles,” Roberts explained.

  As I watched Ken zip around in his motorized wheelchair, all I could do was feel terrible. Here was someone who had almost been killed at age nineteen, and had been incapacitated ever since. What kind of life was that? Still, Ken and others go on living life.

  “That’s terrible!” I said out loud, not realizing I had said it.

  “Yes. There are some with even worse situations here,” Mr. Roberts said. “We have a very young man of twenty-one who is completely paralyzed due to a diving accident in a pool. He can move nothing but his eyes. His mother is here every day to help feed him and wheel him around the property grounds. He cannot speak and has a great deal of trouble swallowing. But we make him as comfortable as possible.”

  Mr. Roberts continued the tour, I caught some of what he was saying. He was talking about the huge strides they were making with their state-of-the-art physical therapy program. But I was thinking of other things. First off, I felt terrible for ever feeling sorry for myself at times whenever my back, feet, or teeth hurt.

  Next, I wondered why God ever allows such suffering to exist here on earth. Why allow a young man of nineteen or even forty to stagnate in a wheelchair with almost no life, or at least not the way life was meant to be lived? I suddenly felt very fortunate to be able to speak properly and to walk anywhere I wanted to and at any time I wanted to.

  I thought about some research I had done on longevity. People have been living longer than ever before in human history. A French woman most recently held the world record as the longest-living person in the world, until she died at age 122. Amazing; 122 years old! Then I researched further and found documentation on the Internet listing the oldest people who are still alive and the oldest people who have passed on. There must have been a hundred people on the list who made it to more than 110 years old. And I’d v
enture to guess that most of these people had fairly good health and their senses for most of their lives.

  So, I wondered again, Why? Why make those people live so long, and others like the two poor souls who were merely a mind in a useless body, suffer so greatly? Then, I realized that I had a possible explanation.

  My reasoning was this: God lets us experience different things, though some may be horrific, sad, or heartbreaking, for a reason, like the young man who had both legs and arms blown off in battle, or a baby who falls out of a window and dies. I believe that we are exposed to many sad things in life to remind us of the precious gift we each have in our own lives.

  I realized how very blessed I was, though I routinely took that blessing for granted.

  “We should get ready to see Miss Lolita,” Mr. Roberts interrupted my daydreaming and philosophy session.

  “Yes, that’s a good idea,” I said, as I took a good look around at some more residents, realizing we all have to play the hand of cards we are dealt with by the good Lord. Most of the people I observed in the home appeared to be resilient, rolling with any punches life had thrown at them through illness, accident, or old age.

  We walked down a long corridor past many rooms, some with residents laid up in bed or sitting in chairs next to the bed. The home was large, and I wondered how it was all kept so organized. How could the staff possible give the proper attention to each individual?

  “This way,” Roberts said, as he made a right turn into a large room. The room looked like a lounge area. There were tables and comfortable chairs, and it was half filled with people.

  A small group of people was gathered around an older woman in a wheelchair. We headed toward them. I studied her from a distance: an old face with coke-bottle glasses. She had a full head of hair, fixed short and neat, a woman with just a few extra pounds and not frail like many older women I had seen. Miss Lolita was laughing with the women near her as we approached.

  “Miss Lolita, we have a special treat for you,” Mr. Roberts said with a warm smile for his honored resident.

  “Who said that?” Miss Lolita smiled a big wide grin.

  “Mom, it’s the director, Mr. Roberts,” an older woman said.

  “Who is there; I can’t see?””

  “Oh, great!” I said in a low annoyed voice, thinking my whole trip and assignment was going down for the count. She must be senile.

  “Of course, it’s Jeremy Roberts, director of operations. I know that! But I can’t make out the person with him. Is it a man or a woman?” she asked, impatient with herself.

  “Mom,” her daughter said, “it is a young man, the reporter from the newspaper out of Washington DC that we were expecting.

  The daughter was a slim woman in her late eighties. Her hair was gray but impeccably cut and neat. She was a fine looking woman now, and I can only imagine how good she must have looked years earlier. And Miss Lolita, being her mother, must have been a looker in her day, too.

  “Come close,” Miss Lolita said. “I can’t see you.”

  “Uh, sure. Okay,” I agreed.

  “Closer, please!”

  I went within three inches of her glasses before she said, “Oh, that’s so much better.”

  I felt kind of silly being that close, and I slowly withdrew to a more comfortable distance.

  “Come close again, sir, so I can get a good look at you,” she said impatiently.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, as I went up to her face again.

  “You know, I’m legally blind, not deaf, Sonny!”

  Now I felt worse for when I had said, “Oh, great!”

  “My hearing is so good that it makes up for my lack of vision.”

  I was suddenly impressed with this ancient woman who had all of her marbles. It appeared to me that Lolita was a straight shooter; she didn’t pull any punches and spoke her mind freely. And why shouldn’t she at her age?

  “You are a handsome lad, now that I can see you.”

  “Not really, I . . . uh. . . .”

  “Listen, Sonny, I’m old. Don’t waste an old lady’s time. Just agree and accept a compliment, okay?” She smiled with a motherly look.

  I laughed and she smiled. “Okay, Miss . . .”

  “Call me Lolita, please.”

  “Okay, Miss Lolita. How do you feel at achieving such a milestone of one hundred and ten years?”

  “I really don’t think about it much, since it is all out of my hands now, isn’t it?” She smiled and looked up as if gazing at the heavens above.

  “I guess, but there must be a secret to your longevity.”

  “Listen here, Sonny, you already know a lot about me. I know nothing about you except that you are a reporter, a handsome lad, and you have brown eyes.”

  “Mom, now be nice,” her daughter said, but she couldn’t help laughing at her mom’s outspokenness.

  I smiled and went right up to her face. “Miss Lolita, what would you like to know about me? I’m an open book.”

  Lolita looked deep into my eyes and asked, “Why are you here?”

  “I am here to tell the world about an amazing woman who has led an amazingly long life.”

  “No, why are you really here?”

  “Your fabulous story . . . .”

  “Don’t lie to me, Sonny. Why are you here? I see it in your eyes.”

  Feeling uncomfortable and seeing Mr. Roberts look at Lolita and then her daughter, I let the question remain in the air for two seconds before I answered. “I am trying to save my job with your story.”

  “Now that’s more like it.” She smiled lovingly. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “None,” I said hesitantly, looking at the floor. “I was engaged, but we broke up a few months ago.”

  “I know,” she said with a loving smile. “I can see it in your face and eyes, and hear it in your voice.”

  Was she clairvoyant? I thought she was very insightful. The Wise One resonated in my mind.

  We spoke about my family, my father, how he died early, and how much I missed him. She felt the pain of my breakup with my fiancée. She studied me carefully and then said, “You remind me of the wounded bear that becomes vicious because he is hurt. You must let it go, Sonny. Breathe in deeply and exhale all the pain. I want you to try this later. It works wonders.”

  Just then, her nurse dropped by, a good-looking, dark-haired woman with very interesting eyes. Her name was Felicia. It was time for Miss Lolita’s snack and Ensure. Lolita asked Felicia to take her outside to sit in the warm air. She wanted only me to accompany them and continue our interview. Miss Lolita’s daughter, Jennifer, and Mr. Roberts would be discussing Lolita’s medical care and nursing home matters.

  The sun was warm, the sky was royal blue, and there was a soft breeze—a beautiful afternoon in Maryland. I watched closely as Miss Lolita carefully sipped the vanilla vitamin-enriched drink. She had a little trouble drinking and eating things, I learned. They had to feed her slowly and in small amounts, but she was doing fabulously at her age. I watched in amazement.

  Anyone aged ninety was amazing, especially if they had their health and wits about them. The few ninety-year olds I had ever seen were in fairly good shape. Here I was witnessing real history. I was communicating with the Wise One, a woman I had soon realized was a real treasure to everyone who came to her for advice. But what really struck me was that, compared to the ninety-year olds, this woman was twenty years their senior.

  I had so much to ask her and so little time. Felicia told me that Miss Lolita would need a nap in another half hour. It was her “energy” nap, and she never missed it.

  Who was I to interrupt a 110-year old woman’s nap?

  We talked freely in the open air. It was better that no one was crowding around us and maybe influencing Miss Lolita’s answers. Although I had a feeling that she would speak her mind regardless of who might be near.

  Felicia kept smiling at me, encouraging me. The people of Hagerstown were in awe of me, or anyone, I thoug
ht, from a big city with the allure of being a member of the media—that is, everyone except someone with a gun and a car aimed right for me.

  Miss Lolita wanted to look into my eyes again, real close. I said, “What? Are you trying to hypnotize me, Miss Lolita?” I laughed.

  She laughed and said, “Listen here, Sonny, I don’t know how or why, but I can see through a person’s eyes into their soul. I want to know you better, especially if you are coming back tomorrow with some ice cream for me! And, Sonny, you can call me Miss Lolita only because I like you.”

  I cracked up and said, “Anything you want! And, Miss Lolita, I’m going today to buy pistachio ice cream because I know you like it.”

  “That’s her favorite!” Felicia said. “And those homemade chocolates they sell in town, well, she’s crazy about those, too. We’re trying to fatten her up.” She laughed.

  “It’s all right for her?”

  “Oh, sure. She just has to eat everything in smaller pieces, and eat slow. But medically she can eat all the sweets she wants, though not too many people visit with pistachio ice cream and chocolates.”

  I looked into Felicia’s eyes and realized that they were unique, not the standard issue basic brown. Her skin was of olive complexion, and her hair was long and black. She had cute bangs, which always make a woman appear younger and cuter.

  While looking her over, trying to calculate her age, I fumbled with my notebook and dropped it on the ground. I quickly bent to retrieve it at the same moment she bent to get it. We almost hit heads as I quickly grabbed it and we both came up and locked eyes. Embarrassed, I said, “Oh, sorry, are they gray? Your eyes, I mean.”

  “Why, yes!” She smiled.

  “Very unique . . . very pretty—your eyes, I mean.”

  “She’s a sweet girl,” Miss Lolita said. “And I can see through your eyes, Sonny. I see that you have a sincere soul and a loving heart. You’re just bitter and in need of some loving care.” She nodded her head a few times and looked me over.