An old guy named Ben

There is a 84 year old guy in a convalescent home a couple of miles from here, he is there because there doesn’t seem to be another place for a guy like him, he is warehoused.

I have never visited the airplane storage site in Arizona, you know the one where all those planes for which there is no use sit row on row in the dry air; this home is like that. There are countless people stored like this.

Ben doesn’t remember well, I suppose that he has some form of dementia, I am not privy to the diagnosis, he has a leg that was injured in an accident about thirty years ago and causes him to limp and find walking difficult; he is a tall guy with a wonderful attitude, about three teeth left in his mouth, but a couple of things that don’t work quite right, so he lays in this home, until.

As far as we can tell Ben has no relatives, everyone is either dead or disappeared from his knowledge. I have been going over to see Ben about once a week for the last year, he is beginning to remember my name, and it is my name that is on the chart as the one to call if and when Ben is taken someplace in an emergency. I am not his guardian, the state has that responsibility. I am just someone who visits him, and who will receive a call some day, and then what?

Last week Ben and I went for a walk down to the corner, it was one of those warm, clear autumn days we have been having this year; I picked up a few of the cyan and the yellow leaves, stuck them in his shirt pocket, told him to keep them as a souvenir. This was the first time that Ben has been outside in at least three years, no one seems to know for sure. It was slow going, he wanted to hang on to railings and such, and he just wanted to look around at the world: A mother went by with a child in a stroller, the effect on Ben was as if the biggest float in the parade had arrived. At first Ben kept repeating that he didn’t think that he could go, that it was too much for him; I had checked with his floor nurse to see if there was anything that I should be concerned about, she said no, nothing; I walked a few steps ahead, talking about what I saw, remembrances of past autumns, and for once Ben wasn’t chattering and joking, he was doing a new thing, an old thing reborn.

This week I took him for another walk, down to the other corner; the weather is a little bit colder, gray skies and a bit of a breeze, just about what you’d expect in Chicago in the middle of November. I picked up a bright yellow maple leaf, stuck it in his shirt button-hole, he wore it down to lunch. The walk went easier than previous.

Ben is one of so many that have forgotten what being is about, to a walk among the leaves of autumn, look at an infant and a proud mother, these things are still here, will always be here. The sadness of warehousing is contrasted in the delight offered by a colored leaf and a young child.

I don’t know why it took me almost a year of visits before I suggested a walk, I don’t know if my visits have any effect, and I think of all those others who are visited by no one, who are warehoused, until. What I do know is the look that Ben gives me when he shakes my hand and says thank you for coming, and I know the look he gives me when he wants to express more, but can’t anymore, that look that says please help me I am drowning.

It is strange that he and I are best friends notwithstanding all these gaps, it is good for me to be reminded that this is what friendship is about.

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