The Third Wave_ A Volunteer Story - Alison Thompson [9]
My mother was a kind, compassionate woman. She embodied unconditional love and cared more for others than for herself. She never pampered herself, preferring to spend her money and time helping people. She ran a busy geriatric hospital, but despite her packed schedule, she always managed to be there for us. She would cook and clean for all four kids, shuttling us to every sporting event and activity, and also find time to toil in our huge garden creating the most beautiful flower beds. My father was always traveling or working, but despite his frequent absences—or perhaps thanks to them—my parents remained totally in love.
My mother and I had a special bond all my life. She would take me on bush walks, naming the different varieties of flowers and wildlife. She would lead me to our favorite waterfall, talking about poetry and music. She spoke of the beautiful, positive things in life and sheltered me from the bad. She fervently believed that good would overcome evil, as my father preached.
Growing up, I was never allowed to watch scary movies. If a TV show had a swear word in it, my mother would change the channel. I remember the first time I swore, when I was about fourteen. My mother sent me to my room for hours and gave me the Bible to read. The irony, of course, was that the Bible was full of terrifying stories: demons riding on three-headed horses, villains being thrown into burning sulfur lakes, prostitutes, and cities turning into salt—all the things in the world that my parents were attempting to shelter me from. My imagination exploded with images far more graphic than any movie ever could have designed. I often woke up from my dreams exhausted from the previous night’s adventures.
Throughout my childhood, my mother’s hospital was my playground. When we weren’t traveling overseas, I spent hundreds of hours there, including most of my holidays. There were around one hundred senior citizens living in the facility. While most little girls played with dolls, my playmates were these patients. I would walk around the wards and visit everyone, talking with them while they handed me candy. After I’d stopped by forty or so rooms, my pockets would be overloaded. I truly loved the old people. They treated me like their granddaughter. I would secretly tell them all that they were my favorite, and would lay my head in their laps and let them stroke my hair. I would dance for them and paint their nails and brush their hair.
Many of the old people were neglected and alone. Half of them had Alzheimer’s and dementia. Each time I visited those patients, it was like they were meeting me for the first time; they were surprised when I guessed so much about their lives, as if by magic. A kind blind lady knew me by the sound of my footsteps. I would try really hard to mix up my stride when I walked past her room, but she always knew I was the one sneaking in to see her.
When I was sixteen, I started officially working part-time at the hospital as a nurse’s aide. I was proud of my beautiful nurse’s uniform, which was a knee-length pale pink dress. I walked the hospital halls carrying bedpans as if they were laden with treasures.
Not long after I began, I saw a dead body for the first time. I walked into a room where the nurses were filling up open orifices on a fresh corpse, which they did so that fluids wouldn’t leak out. I was fascinated by the color of the dead woman’s skin and how her eyes were still wide open. When the nurses rolled her over, a great sound escaped her lungs. “She’s alive, she’s alive!” I cried, as the nurses shuffled me off down the hall and closed the door.
My parents tried very hard to shelter me and my siblings from the bad in the world. Later I learned that living in a bubble isn’t necessarily a good thing. Eventually, any bubble is bound to burst. Mine burst a few years after I had graduated from teacher’s college at age twenty-two.