I’ve recently been looking after an older woman afflicted with Alzheimer's disease; just today we were working on a jigsaw puzzle when she turned to me and said, “You know, you should try to enjoy everything you have going on right now, even the not-so-fun stuff. You’ll miss it one day. Every moment counts and I promise you I’m still counting mine.” I looked at her kind of astonished; I have to remind her of my name everyday, but then a moment like this slips out. She just looked back at me and smiled, saying, “well that’s enough philosophy for now,” going right back to her puzzle.

As I tend to do, I starting thinking a lot about my life and it sparked a memory. As a child, I spent a lot of time in my grandfather’s nursing home. Actually called, “The Whitridge” my grandfather angrily dubbed the place “the shitridge”. The day I first came to see him, I started to understand where he was coming from. The places wreaked of sadness, with good reason I suppose as most of the occupants were dying. I remember sitting on the staircase and a little old woman was trying to crawl her way up; her nurse had left to get something and wasn’t watching her. She moaned and cried up a few steps. I felt uncomfortable and I felt bad for feeling uncomfortable. Finally, her nurse came back and explained that she did this often, that she wasn’t in pain but seeking attention.

But I believed, and still do believe that’s exactly why she was in pain. Nobody was paying attention to her. I started to draw a lot of parallels between the way she was acting and the way my baby cousin was. They were surprisingly similar, crying for attention, needing an eye on them at all times in order to ensure their safety. The beginning of life and the end of life are perhaps very much the same process in reverse. We grow into self sufficient beings only to then revert back. I suppose this is all the more reason to live by the words of the woman I’ve been looking after. What better time than now to appreciate my time in between the beginning and the end.