After my freshman year of high school, I was finally old enough to volunteer at my local hospital. I had the required forms filled out from school and had the required shots done to work in the hospital setting. The volunTEENs, as we were called, all had to attend a briefing on hospital codes and where our ID badges would and would not allow access. I was assigned to the front desk of the hospital as a bright face to say "Hello!" and "How may I help you?". During this time I was informed of two women, a mother and daughter, who were regulars to the hospital. I did not know it then, but I had come to find out just how important these two women were to be in my life.
The older of the two was an elderly woman who had lost her husband years before I started volunteering. She had Alzheimer's and believed that her husband was still alive and recovering in the hospital. Her daughter had brought her to the hospital every single at breakfast and lunch time for the past five years before I started volunteering. When they would come in, the older would ask how her husband was doing and the Pink Ladies (the volunteers older than 18, mostly women) told me to say something like "He is still resting" or "He is asleep right now" rather than to try and explain that he was long gone by several years.
I sat at the front desk and watched as these two women would come morning and noon, twice a day, through sun and rain, just to hear the same words day by day and not remembering them come the next one. I wondered to myself how much love was in the daughter's heart to take her mother day in and day out to the hospital for so many years... and those years grew. As I graduated from freshman year to senior year, the summers volunteering came and went just as the two women did. Every day, twice a day in the hospital, with the addition of a cane for the mother by my senior year.
Now I am a sophomore in college. Before this school year started, I was doing a summer internship at the same hospital. I spent most of my time in the pharmacy but I did go around the hospital to deliver the medications to the different departments and different floors. I even ate lunch with the pharmacy technicians and pharmacists. As I was walking toward the dining area one day, I saw the two women. I said hello to the daughter, who remembered me, and she couldn't believe I had finished my first year in college (considering I'm currently 19 but look 12). The mother was in a wheelchair but not bound to it. She held her cane in her lap for when she would walk from the wheelchair to the car.
Just seeing these two women remind me that love is real and if you take care of it and believe in it, it never dies. I can still remember the mother, although old and frail and never able to quite remember my name but remembering to hug and say "I love you". Now would be nine years she has been brought to the hospital day after day. Nine years and counting. This is what I have seen with my own eyes, and this is what I remember, not on a daily basis, but when I need it most. I remember when I feel that no one loves or that there is no love in my life, and this story keeps me going.
