An elderly woman rang the office today to offer some tinned goods for donation. We talked for a little while, about her cockatiel and his love of baked beans and celery, and her husband of 62 years who’d gone into respite care that day because he has dementia.
He will never come home, because his dementia is the kind that caused him to become violent towards his wife. He was especially angry this morning, and went after her with a broom.
And I don’t know that we resolved anything really, though I suggested setting jelly inside drinking straws for her cockatiel to nibble at. And we couldn’t pick up the tins of food she wanted to donate, so she will need to find someone else to take them, or else throw them out. She doesn’t have family nearby who could drop them off to us, or to help her manage her husband’s condition.
I hope that one day, when I’m an old lady and something kind of big happens, that the person on the other end of the phone will take a minute to talk to me.