To Laugh Often and Much

I'd never seen Ruthie exhibit any sort of emotion or expression, I'd only seen her constantly grab her oversized spectacles, with lenses as thick as bullet-proof glass, and push them up over her eyes so that she could drink her Boost shake without hitting them with her cup. But today I got off the elevator on the second floor, along with a nurse, and Ruthie was standing there in her usual oversized jumper dress, leaning on her walker, and bawling. Not just crying, her eyes were ringed with redness and snot poured out of her nose as she wailed. The nurse asked her what was wrong but Ruthie isn't much of a communicator so that went nowhere. All we could do was encourage Ruthie to follow us to the dining room where, we assured her, some food would help her to feel better.

A beautician had obviously swept through the south end of the second floor, because many of the ladies were sporting new hairdo's, though my compliments seemed lost on them. Katherine especially received a drastic cut, her formerly longish, thinning gray hair now bobbed just above her shoulder. While it softened her look, it did nothing to change her personality. She spent several minutes, her eyes fixed in anger, accusing Anita of several small crimes she wasn't remotely guilty of. "You did it, didn't you? Why don't you just say it? Say you're sorry. Can't you just say it? I bet you won't. You'll never say you're sorry. You've been drinking." The accusations continued without pause, until Anita screamed something unintelligible at the top of her lungs and slapped the table top. Katherine slapped the table in response and the conversation stopped. Trying to change the subject, I asked Katherine if she was hungry. "Who wouldn't be?" she asked me as if it were the silliest question in the world. I suppose when you're dealing with an alcoholic who owes you an apology, like she is, it is a silly question.

When Ruthie finally entered the dining room, I encouraged her to sit down and Katherine even kindly pulled the chair out for her. But by the time I finished my sentence, Ruthie had broken down crying again, tears and mucus flowing from her face and into her hands. I sweetly told her everything was going to be alright and she surprised me and wrapped her arms around me, her snot-covered hands gripping my shoulders. I surreptitiously wiped my shirt off, so as not to offend Ruthie, as if she would have known what I was doing anyway. Rosalie sat across from me while I made her laugh by challenging her to win a clean plate club contest against Mary. Mary is about a hundred years old and can't feed herself, so Rosalie got a kick out of my made-up battle. Wait, I take that back, Mary certainly can feed herself, and tried several times during the meal to do so by flopping her arthritic old hand into her mashed potatoes and gravy and licking her fingers. I went through several napkins attempting to keep her clean but for an old lady, she's greased lightning. As I wiped Mary's hand clean again and Rosalie begged for yet another glass of water and Katherine growled at Anita and Inez flailed her arms about the room in some sort of sign language frenzy, Angie just laughed and laughed and laughed at nothing in particular. I couldn't help but join her, so crazy was the whole surreal dinner hour tonight. Because if you don't laugh at it all like Angie, you'll just end up crying like Ruthie.