My Door is Always Open: The Residents Of Secure...

I always have trouble with office doors. If they are shut, people knock on them to see if I'm there, but that's all they want. When I leave them open? Well, here's a typical day of my door being open - it's what makes the day worth while when it's over. I usually get about 20 solid minutes of work done and then my friends on the Alzheimer's unit start drifting in...

Mr. Day:

Reads my folder tabs, selects one, points and asks me to get back to him. After five mornings of this, I called Mr. Day's wife to see what he could possibly be thinking. Afterwards, I made him a few "files" of his own, putting some math problems inside, lists of numbers, and a few street maps I ran off from the phone book and waited for him to visit again. The next visit, I handed him his file, pulled up a chair for him at the other side of my desk and asked him to look it over.

He promptly took my worksheet and completed the math problems in his head and asked me to write the numbers down for him. I have no idea what urban planners did with street maps, but the map I gave him upset him. He took one look at it and crumpled it up and threw it at me saying, 'no good.' When he rifled through more pages in the file to find the lists of numbers he got very quiet. After five minutes, he said, "I'm not getting paid for this am I?" "No, Mr. Day you aren't." His response, "then do it yourself." And Mr. Day left for the day.

Mr. Day holds a Ph.d in Mathematics from Rice, and worked as an urban planner for 40 years in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Area. His father was a member of the House of Representatives.

Mr. Burke: When he brightens my doorway, I think 'Old Faithful'. Mr. Burke loops the hallways in his wheel chair once an hour. He travels very slow but he's precise. When he gets to my door he stops and laughs like Jed Clampett on the Beverly Hillbillies:

"Weeellll Doggies!" says Mr. Burke who's specialty is singing the first line of a song out loud and listening to see if anyone else finishes it off for him.

He sings to me: "Hey, good lookin.." to which I sing back, "Whatca got cookin" and that's as far as the song goes.

Then, Mr. Burke tells me he loves me and proposes. Every day, four to five times a day I am flattered beyond belief as Mr. Burke looks across my desk and asks me to marry him.

I'm female, I'm flattered and my answer is always: "I'd love to marry you Mr. Burke" to which he responds with only a simple smile and a nod before he turns around and pulls himself down the other side of the hall and away from my office.

Mr. Burke was a romping, stomping oil and gas litigator for 40 years in the State of Texas. His sons now carry on the family tradition of romping and stomping in the courts for him.

Mrs. Hernandez is a small Hispanic woman, 77, who weighs in at 69 pounds at 4 and a half feet tall. She fixates on me when she's upset. She wanders into my office, points and yells at me "NO Mamasita, No, NO, NO!" and shakes her finger in my face. I smile, give her a hug and ask her if she's finished making my wedding dress yet and she snaps back into another dimenson.

"Just a few more, just a few more and I'll be done." She smiles and sets off down the hallway with a mission she forgets before she's gone ten feet. From what I can tell Mrs. H was mistreated during her life - either as a child or as a spouse.

Mrs. Hernandez owned a bridal shop that for years boasted of the finest hand beading on this side of Dallas, Texas.

My other regular visitor is Mrs. Dalton. She's the worst of the confused, still walking, talking residents. I can't figure out what part of her life her brain has gravitated to for the Alzheimers journey. All I can figure out is that the babies are at the church and she has to get there. I'd carry a clicker just to count how many times a day she says "the bebers, the bebers, I've got to go, the bebers" but I don't.

She comes into my office looking for her 'bebers' and I perform a search for her, assure her they are not in my desk and she smiles and says, " I know, the bebers are at church" and she heads out down the hallway to go get them.

Mrs. Dalton was a housewife, never worked outside the home, and inherited her husbands' children upon marrying him. She never had any 'bebers' of her own. Her step children report she never attended church.