Your Granny's Nurse: Look Closer, See ME

I have to admit that this is not an original poem. I have read this to every Nursing Assistant class I have ever taught.

This was found among the meager belongings of an eighty nine year old, nursing home patient in Scotland, following her death. It has been widely published.

Look Closer, See ME

What do you see, Nurses?
What do you see?
What are you thinking
When you're looking at me?

A crabbit old woman,
Not very wise,
Uncertain of habit
With faraway eyes?

Who dribbles her food
And makes no reply
When you say in a loud voice,
"I do wish you'd try!"

Who seems not to notice
The things that you do,
And forever is losing
A stocking or shoe?

Who, resisting or not,
Lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding,
The long day to fill.

Is that what you're thinking?
Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, Nurse,
Your'e not looking at ME.

I'll tell you who I am
As I sit here so still
As I do at your bidding
As I eat at your will.

I'm a small child of ten,
With a Mother and Father,
Brothers and sisters
Who love one another.

A young girl of sixteen,
With wings on her feet,
Dreaming that soon,
A lover she'll meet.

A bride soon at twenty,
My heart gives a leap.
Remembering the vows
We have promised to keep.

At twenty five now,
I have young of my own,
Who need me to guide them,
And a secure happy home.

A woman of thirty
My young they grow fast,
Bound to each other
With ties that should last.

At forty, my young sons
Have grown and have gone,
But my man's beside me
To see I don't mourn.

At fifty, once more
Baby's play round my knee,
Again we know children,
My husband and me.

Dark days are upon me,
My husband is dead.
I look to the future
And shudder with dread.

For my young are all rearing
Young of their own,
And I think of the years
And the love I have known.

I'm an old woman now,
And nature is cruel,
Tis her jest to make old age
Look like a fool.

The body, it crumbles,
Grace and vigor depart
There is now a stone,
Where I once had a heart.

But inside this old carcass,
A young girl still dwells,
And now and again,
My battered heart swells.

I remember the joys,
I remember the pain,
And I'm living and loving
All over again.

I think of the years,
All too few, gone too fast,
And accept the stark fact
That nothing can last.

So, open your eyes, people,
open and see,
Not a crabbit old woman,
Look closer, See ME.