CHAPTER ONE
The nurse aide exhaled a long deep lungful of air, let out slowly, deliberately in unison with the elderly woman on the bed as she exhaled for the last time. The struggle had been brief this time. No thrashing about or fighting, just a few twitches of the head and neck demonstrated the tenuous hold life held on this drawn-up remnant of a human being.
Death looks different in real life than in the movies. Detachment is easy when you know it is only play-acting and the actor will most likely jump right up and go to lunch when the scene is finished. Real death brings overwhelming emotions, purple blotchy skin, and alien odors. Real death rarely happens suddenly or with jerking or tossing. Rather, death creeps in slowly, edging out the life and the breath until only stillness remains. Death in a nursing home is an expected event, watched for and waited for by mostly old women, a few old men, and seasoned caregivers who recognize\ the signs as surely as the sun rises every morning.
Smiling, the nurse aide removed the pillow from the face of the elderly woman. Still smiling she looked into the dead woman's eyes as if searching for her own reflection. Gently she closed the old woman's eyes and held the lids in place for a full minute, knowing the dead lids would not stay in place but would open again, knowing those eyes had seen all they could ever see and the memory-movies inside her head had played their last. ................
