Columnist Bill Herr taught high school mathematics and science for 32 years before serving as a volunteer and then as a staff chaplain at two nursing homes.
By Bill Herr
American culture places a premium on a person being physically attractive and having a friendly, outgoing personality. Movies and television promote this. The opposite is a person that has advanced Alzheimer’s Disease or some other physical disability that renders the person unable to do any activity except to breathe.
At the nursing home a female resident had experienced several strokes and was unable to move her body at all. She simply lay prone in her bed all day and stared straight ahead. She did not speak or respond at all when I spoke her name and read scripture or prayed.
When she died, I went to the funeral home visitation. Looking at a collage of pictures of the resident, I was stunned to see a photo that revealed a beautiful young lady in shorts standing at the edge of a woods smiling while holding a shotgun pointed upward. It was the resident. She looked like a movie actress.
Columnist Bill Herr taught high school mathematics and science for 32 years before serving as a volunteer and then as a staff chaplain at two nursing homes.
By Bill Herr
One of the most difficult things in life is to forgive someone that wrongs us with words or actions. In the nursing home almost all residents were kind to staff members and other residents.
Yet some of the kindest ones were hard on immediate members of their families. They would naturally rather live in their own home than in a nursing home. If family members are instrumental in the decision to move a loved one to the nursing home due to health issues or age, there is a tendency to hold family members responsible for feelings of dissatisfaction.
Columnist Bill Herr taught high school mathematics and science for 32 years before serving as a volunteer and then as a staff chaplain at two nursing homes.
By Bill Herr
The love between married couples is powerful, and as chaplain I witnessed it among couples that lived in the nursing home. Here are several examples.
Columnist Bill Herr taught high school mathematics and science for 32 years before serving as a volunteer and then as a staff chaplain at two nursing homes.
By Bill Herr
When a person develops dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), some of the wiring in the brain gets out of alignment. The result is difficulty verbalizing, having memory issues and possibly posing behavioral changes. It is believed that everything we ever learned or experienced in our lives is recorded somewhere in our brain.
Columnist Bill Herr taught high school mathematics and science for 32 years before serving as a volunteer and then as a staff chaplain at two nursing homes.
By Bill Herr
My aunt lived in a nursing home in a nearby city. I have great memories of my aunt and uncle. At family gatherings in their home, the younger ones played games and the older ones played cards. My aunt had been active in social organizations. My uncle had a good job and always had a cigar in his mouth when they played cards. He had passed years before when I went to visit my aunt a nursing home.
When I visit someone I always bring up past events in that person’s life in the conversation. When I mentioned my uncle’s name, my aunt, who now had dementia, asked me where he was. I said, “He is in heaven, you remember he died a few years back.” That was the wrong thing for me to say. My aunt cried and said, “Why didn’t someone tell me?” She was angry.
Columnist Bill Herr taught high school mathematics and science for 32 years before serving as a volunteer and then as a staff chaplain at two nursing homes.
By Bill Herr
There was one group of residents in the nursing home that had something in common–the veterans. Each had a story to tell. Here are three stories they told me.
An Air Force veteran was in charge of the radio on a B-17. On a mission his plane was shot up badly and was flying back to the base. Two enemy planes approached from the opposite direction and passed on the sides. They turned around and came up behind the B-17. The resident said he made his peace with God. It turned out the planes were piloted by friendly Swedish pilots that escorted the B-17 safely back to the base.
An Army veteran was in a body of American soldiers that marched through what appeared to be a deserted German village. At the edge of the village they looked back and saw a German soldier waving a white flag where they had just been. The resident was the only soldier that could speak German so the commanding officer asked him to go back and speak to the German soldier.
