Forty-two hours of anguish and compassion
at the Jewish Home for Aged
Please
■.■
I
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
Assistant Editor
GLENN TRIEST
Photographs
(opposite):
A volunteer comforts
resident Miriam
Werzberger, who recently
lost her brother. "He used
to care for me."
Editor's note: Late
last month,
Elizabeth Applebaum
spent 42
consecutive hours
at the Jewish Home
for Aged's Borman
Hall. The following
story details her
experiences there.
T'S 5 P.M. TUESDAY AND ESTHER
can't find her room.
"Where am I going?" she says. "Is
my room here or there? What should
I do? I can't remember where my
room is. Do you know where it is?
Where am I going?"
She begins to sing as she wanders
around the Jewish Home for Aged's
Borman Hall. Then she stops, straightens up
and, in a brilliant moment of lucidity, says,
"The whole world is a very dark room.
Everything is inevitable. It's a short span from
the cradle to the grave. All is a dream."
Seconds later, she is bent over and mum-
bling again. "Is my room
here or there? What
should I do? Where am I
going?"
This is the place of lost
souls. It is a place where
the most important
thing in the world is get-
ting Bingo or having
someone hold your hand
for five minutes. It is a
place where time is con-
tinually pierced by the
cruel sounds of night ter-
rors and the zip of the
body bag over a corpse.
Part of a leftover sand-
wich rests in the bird
feeder by the front door
of Borman Hall. Rap
music blares from across
the street. A chill clings
to the city, and the harsh
wind seems to penetrate
every pore of your body.
Inside the Home for
Aged, it is another day
like yesterday and just
like tomorrow. Maybe
they'll show a good film
today; maybe the food will be a little tastier
tomorrow. Maybe last night was relatively
quiet because David next door didn't wake up
screaming at 4 a.m., tormented by memories
of Dachau where his whole family was
murdered and from which he emerged
weighing 80 pounds and with agony forever
burned in his heart.
But for the most part, time just doesn't seem
to move here. Walk in at any time of the day
and you'll see an old woman sitting near the
front door on the left. She can't understand
anything said to her, can't communicate her
thoughts. She likes to collect things: leftover
plastic cups, scraps of toilet paper, old
magazines. She stacks her goods on her
wheelchair, then pushes it back and forth,
back and forth between her place in the lob-
by and a seat beside the nurse's station on the
first floor. She does this all day and often all
night, too.
On the second floor a woman screams "Help!
Help! Help! Help!" as she sits in the middle
of the lobby. No one is hurting her.
And on the third floor, an old man breathes
with the aid of a machine. Beside him, on the
standard orange bedspread found throughout
Borman Hall, is another man who barely
moves without assistance.
Resident Nettie Freeman knows all of these
people and she cares for them, every one. It's
4:30 p.m. Monday and she knows residents are
getting excited because
it's not too long until
dinner. So she's looking
around to see who will
need help getting to the
dining room. She knows
who can't push himself
in his wheelchair and
who's likely to forget the
location of her seat in
the dining hall.
"One night I went to
bed well, and the next
night I had a heart at-
tack," Freeman says of
how she came to be a
resident at Borman
Hall. "The doctors told
me I had to have a
bypass. I had a triple
bypass. Then the doctors
at Sinai came down and
told my son, 'Your
mother is having a
stroke: I couldn't speak
or walk. They brought
me here in a wheel-
chair."
Today, Freeman is up
and about, looking
dashing in her new pearl drop earrings.
Nurses and hospital officials stop to compli-
ment her hairstyle; "You're our Betty Grable!"
they say.
Freeman is happy at Borman Hall. "I like
to help others, and there's so much to do;' she
says. Still, Freeman hopes to leave in the near
future. Once she's fully recuperated she plans
to return to her apartment, where she lives
by herself.
"She does everything here;' interjects Bor-
man Hall resident Harry Weinsaft. "When
she sees people who don't want to eat she
urges them: 'Eat, eat!' "
Freeman nods and smiles. "One man, if I
don't open his milk he won't drink. For
another, I peel his egg. That man, if he doesn't
CLOSE U P
Don't Forget Me!
(left):
Resident Fannie Blau and
nurse's aide Lawrence
Coleman.
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
25