Soon after Mim died, I mentioned to my oldest brother that I wanted to take THANK YOU cupcakes to the nursing home where she lived the past few years. He sadly suggested that I not. Our sis had told him about the staff's ill treatment of her, how they ridiculed on the occasions they weren't ignoring her. She confided her doubts that any of them would even notice if she died.
What he shared was truly heartbreaking, but the phrasing gave me pause. Over the years, I'd heard her use almost the exact same description - right down to "doubting they'll notice if I am gone" - about practically everyone who deeply genuinely cared about her.
Today, heard from a friend who's especially touched at plans to share Mim's memorial tribute over Thanksgiving. Seems that for years, she & her husband had traveled from Pennsylvania to New Jersey to share Thanksgiving dinner with Mim - at the nursing home.
Hmmmm.... I had Peter's sense of how the staff had treated Mim, which was the opposite of my brief impression. It hit me that someone who spent several holiday dinners with Mim - who was closer to Mim than all her siblings combined - would have the true lay of the land. If Mim was being treated so harshly, she'd surely have confided to one of her most intimate friends.
So, I asked. To my question, "Did you get the sense, from personal experience, that they were attentive & compassionate?" she replied, "Yes — and I know that some of them had quite a close relationship to Mim."
Which is more heartbreaking: the staff mistreating my sister ~or~ my sister's constant rejection that others cared about her, held her in high regard, appreciated & loved her?
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