Thorny Rewards

I have a job as a nighttime nurse, taking care of an elderly woman nine and-and-half decades into her life journey.

It's not the kind of job I had passionately dreamed of as a kid -- it's not flashy, important-sounding or even action-packed; gone are the days when I thought I would be piloting a fighter jet or driving a police car in zigzag patterns around the city for a living. Those fantasies about breaking the sound barrier without a second thought or delivering stereoscopic comeuppance to bad guys loyal to The Clash ("I fought the law and the law won") were really just that, one of the many sacrifices one needed to make in order to grow into a bigger person.

No, this job couldn't be farther from those that had fueled so much of my childhood and adolescence with feverish passion... And, yet, it does have moments when it comes close to delivering the same kind of adrenaline or emotional payoff I once believed myself entitled to.

There's nothing quite as scary as announcing oneself upon entering the house and getting no reply, worse-case scenarios flashing through my panicked mind until the faint sounds of peaceful snoring or some weak (but very much alive) voice finally calls back and shoves my soul back into my body with an audible sigh of cold, burning relief.

At one point I found my elderly companion flat on the floor and honestly thought that that was it, but it thankfully wasn't anything more than a slip that her own age had made look much worse than it really was.

Those are the moments that make me dread going to work, that make me almost prefer financial hardship over this constant show of uneasiness, fear and responsibility... 

But then there are those other moments when we get to talk and I'm suddenly gifted with a front-row seat to witness her voyage through the foggy and treacherous sea of memories, delighting myself with every detail she recalls, almost tasting, hearing and smelling the things she describes as they are rescued from the deep vaults at the back of her mind.

But the thing that really gets me? Those rare times when she wants something more and asks me to pull out my phone (a devise she's marvelled by with almost childlike wonder), whereupon we watch silly stuff together, from songs and TV shows she remembers to that modern stuff that she will never get but whose explanations she enjoys hearing me deliver -- I never thought I'd watch Beavis and Butt-Head with someone whose age is north of ninety and enjoy it, but I also never thought many things that are now my everyday reality.

I'm not sure I even like this job, but I sure love the people it allowed me to meet.