MARIA & WHY, A NURSING HOME TALE 

By Karen Strickholm 12/06/2024

Today, I will tell you the tale of Maria. But first, a quick word about these missives.

Why do I write them? Mainly, I want to share with you what life is really like in a nursing home. One out of four of you will be clocking some time here, after all. Yet most know little or nothing about it. Life can be hysterically funny, moving, inspirational, and yes, often horrifying. You will need some mad skills to survive and thrive when your turn comes, and so will your loved ones.

I hope to help with that.

Second, sadly the public “safety net” is filled with holes.

Nursing homes are a patchwork system, based on models from the last century, run almost entirely by investment bankers – the same people running our prisons, and with many similarities. Hence, there is a fundraising component here.

Lastly, this life experience has evolved into a spiritual journey, as well as a medical one.

What has my life amounted to thus far? How do I recover from this extended traumatic experience? How to better co-create with the divine? How best to serve?

Deep inquiry indeed, and of value to share.

And now, on to the tale of roommate Maria…

Families here in New Mexico tend to be large sprawling networks, and Maria belongs to one of them. She and her mom are a local crack-dealing team at the street level, obtaining wares from cartel connections for their cottage enterprise.

In these joints, you get what you get as a roommate. If you are in a mainly publicly funded place, which most are, you’ll be sharing space with all sorts. Maria was with me for just a few months, recovering from an amputation. During that time, she was hard at work trying to win visitation rights for her son, whom she loved very much.

Why no visitation? Welp. That’s a story! A while back, Maria came to fisticuffs with the other baby mama of her son’s baby daddy. During the battle, that baby mama got the upper hand, and dragged Maria aways down a dirt road, scraping her heel in the process.

Due to the drugs and diabetes and whatnot, Maria’s foot had to be partially amputated. Due to more drugs and lack of proper wound care, the amputation site became badly infected. A second amputation at the ankle ensued.

Did Maria learn anything from this?

No, because she changed nothing after the second cut (par-tay!! 🍻🪅🥳) which resulted in – you guessed it – a third amputation, this time mid-calf.

When she left the hospital, she was assigned to my room.

As a roommate she was easy to be with – cheerful,  funny and entertaining.

She shared freely about her life, her plans, her incessant craving for Taki’s. I had received a bunch of sample lipsticks earlier, and laid them on her. She got such a kick out of doing her lips, burning through multiple tubes in under a month.

Maria had twitchy energy, patrolling the halls, rolling outside for a smoke. Periodically she’d disappear into our shared bathroom to vape some weed. It’s legal here in New Mexico, but cannot be used at nursing homes that receive federal funding like Medicare or Medicaid, which is most of them.

For me, these extended bathroom visits fell squarely in the category of see no evil. If I were Maria, I’d be vaping weed too.

Learning to walk on her fancy new artificial leg, Maria trekked the hallways to practice, playing and sparring with staff, most of whom knew Maria and her tribe from around town.

Know that here in New Mexico, Maria’s story is not an anomaly but the norm.

Chronic poverty and drugs are a toxic brew. Don’t think I didn’t see the crushed spirit underneath all that acting out and addiction. The grief of losing her baby, no matter the cause. The hopelessness. The inability to shift course. Sharing lipstick and food was the best I could do.

A lingering memory – One afternoon, wall-shakingly loud rock and roll thundered down the hallway…

“What’s that?”

“Oh just Maria. She brought her boombox into the shower.”

I still think of her often, and send her blessings.

end

And now, here is your AMUSE BOUCHE, Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot…