Before I was a nurse…before I was a poultry princess…I was a home health aide. I made decent money, and traveled from house to house, doing light cleaning and cooking and helping with usual daily activities like bathing or grocery shopping for the elderly. If I had a good house, with sweet people and a supportive family, it was wonderful. Most of the houses I went to were good country folk that just needed a little help, their sons and daughters busy with children and jobs and homes of their own. There were exceptions…like the family that thought nothing of having 40 people over for a big fish fry on a Saturday night..and leave ALL the greasy dishes and left over food…til Monday morning. I cannot describe the smell of 2 day old coleslaw and fish bones left in an un-air conditioned kitchen for two days, not to mention the dishes piled high, here and there, not even rinsed off. The only people who lived in the house were the husband and wife, the husband too disabled to do the dishes…the wife too confused. I called the office…I had another house I had to be at in 2 hours and this would take all day. My boss told me to wash enough dishes for the couple to use for 2 days…leave everything else. Just getting the sink cleaned out enough to wash a few dishes took so long…I got all I could done, did some laundry, helped the wife with her bath…and had to leave for my next house.
My boss called the daughter that was in charge and informed her that I was not allowed to do the whole family’s dishes from a fish fry over the weekend. The daughter EXPLODED and announced she didn’t think it was that big of a deal for “that GIRL” to do a few dishes. What the daughter didn’t know was my boss had driven to the house, taken pictures of the kitchen then left. She informed the daughter that either she followed the rules OR she didn’t get help from ANY “girls”. The daughter got snotty and that’s when my boss said “I can just put these pictures of rotting food in your file…the food you left out for your confused mother to eat by accident. She could get food poisoning and die. This could potentially get your mother taken out of the home.”
After that, I went back and was greeted coolly, but I did my job and everything went fine, until one day, the husband called and demanded a “girl” come up that very moment to help with something.
My boss tried to move people around, but this was in the days before cell phones, so she couldn’t get a hold of me. She tried to send someone else, a sweet lady that had been an aide for 20 years, but the husband refused. “I ain’t got to time tell ev’body where stuff IS. Send MY girl or don’t send a girl at all!”
So…I guess we all got fired and I never knew what happened to that couple after that. I occasionally will drive down that road and see that house…it’s practically falling over, but people still live there.
Once, I took care of an old man that his wife died literally the day before I was supposed to start at his house. He had had a stroke 15 years previously that left him paralyzed on his right side, but his mind was sharp. He had a slow witted son that lived with him that fancied himself a cowboy and thought I was his personal maid. He treated me disrespectfully and got angry because once I accidentally hung one of his dad’s shirts in his closet. He called my boss to tattle on my laziness and stupidity. The next time I was in the office, my boss pulled me aside and said “Are you doing the son’s laundry, too?” I said yes I was and that I didn’t mind as long as he was sweet about it. But of course, a month or so later, I did it again and he met me at the door, rudely insisting I GET IT RIGHT. I smiled and said sweetly “ oh, I will NEVER do that again! NEVER! mostly because I’m not even supposed to be doing your laundry at all! You can do it yourself to make sure it gets done exactly the way you want!” And…I never did his laundry again.
But before the laundry incident…the old man wanted me to take his wife’s clothes and donate them. So I went after work one day and sacked up her personal belongings with him watching and talking about this outfit or that. I told him I was going to go thru them when I got home and sort them out to the places to give them away.
I carried the sacks inside my house and started going thru them. Clint and Trevor played and watched TV. I was pregnant with Tara and was grateful for a chore that I could do sitting down.
I pulled out one of those Christmas gifts you see at Walmart, cheap…people buy them when they really don’t know what to get a woman…a decorative box with a small purse and matching necklace and earrings. It looked brand new , but had been opened. There was a huge bulge in the purse. I took off the clear plastic lid, thinking there was some Kleenex or something left in it. I unzipped the little red purse.
I closed it back up immediately and gasped.
I looked up at Clint, my mouth hanging open. He said “what is it?” I handed him the purse. He unzipped it and pulled out a wad of hundred dollar bills and twenties. He counted it. “eight hundred and forty dollars.” he said.
I got up and went to the phone. I called my boss and told her what had happened. I told her I would take it back to the old man the following morning.
The next morning, I walked into his house. He was sitting in his chair as usual and greeted me warmly. I sat across from him and pulled out the money. He stared at it for a moment and said “what’s this?” I told him about the purse and that I had looked very carefully in all the other stuff but that’s all I found. $840. He said “my wife was getting confused before she died. I had found some of the money she had hid, but I guess I missed this” He looked at me, perplexed. “why’d you bring it back? why didn’t you keep it? You’ve got that little boy, and another one on the way. I know you could have used it. Did your husband know?” I said, yes, Clint was aware of how much money I had found. “He didn’t want to keep it either? I never would have known, you could have just kept it and spent it, and I never would have known.” He had tears in his eyes. “I never would have known.”
I patted him and gave him a hug and said to him what Clint and I still say when we talk about it.
“maybe you wouldn’t have known, but God would. And so would we. And…we like to sleep at night.”
We sleep very well. God bless.
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