Starting Over

Up on that old, acquainted street in Boston laid a recent nursing home. It was quite pretty on the outside, with its decorated signs and colorful butterscotch walls. The bricks that made up the foundation were prim and perfect. There was never anything misplaced.

The doors were painted white, with nothing more than a chip. The people that walked in always came off as happy. The clothes they wore seemed expensive and unnecessary. They were often rich and well off. Of course, you had to be well-off for someone to live in an assisted living center like this.

But on the inside, the nursing home was flawed. It was as if everything had altered. Nothing was the same.

It wasn’t because of the adornments. Those were perfect too. With the gorgeous bouquets of purple, yellow, and pink flowers, no one could resist the cheery atmosphere of what the room attempted to bestow.

But beyond the frilly streamers and painted walls, beyond the pictures of fake smiles and old fashioned hair styles, lay damaged bodies.

The people that lived there were almost ancient, it seemed, with their wrinkled fingers and shrinking demeanors. Some of them were dying, spending the rest of their days trapped in an institution with strangers.

Some of them were joyful and positive. Those were the kind that had high spirits. They knew their life had been well and was just about up. But the smiles still remained.

Others, like the woman with the once strawberry blonde hair, were depressed. That woman, the one that sat in the back daily and was only visited by her husband, knew her life was ending. She found no satisfaction in that. She understood her time was almost up, but she didn’t want to accept it.

That’s why she was so grumpy when people tried to talk to her. That’s why she had yelled at the trainee the other day for glancing at her. That’s why even her husband seldom visited. That’s why most of the residents had abandoned her.

But not so long ago, that woman was the light of one man’s world.

Not so long ago, that woman was young and beautiful.

And that woman, despite the cruel names she was called behind her back, used to go by Eleanor.