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Everybody is learning. The blind elder who 70 years ago was picking cotton in a Louisiana field alongside her grandfather and the Harvard educated college teacher confront each other in a friendly and continuing battle of ideas. She is a life long church goer and believer. He is a skeptic who questions how the elders of the home can be joyful when there is so much cruelty and violence in the world. Despite their differences, or maybe because of the authenticity of their encounters, their respect and affection for one another grows. The person who dropped out of school 65 years ago during the great depression, learns about such modern phenomena as human cloning and then takes a position on it as the residents share and sometimes ardently debate opinions and values. The woman with Alzheimer's who clinically may be considered cognitively dysfunctional, sings a song that she never heard before coming to Live Oak, or lights up at the sight of a person she knows for only a few weeks. There is a persistent evangelism for life that lifts the spirit yet is not afraid to encounter sadness and despair in a way that is always respectful. On one recent day, Elizabeth Smith (not her name) was escorted to the community meeting by a nursing assistant on the day after she came to the home. A clear and articulate woman, she was invited to tell the 35 or so elders gathered in the room who she is and where she had come from. She spoke of her demoralization about being in a nursing home. "I never thought it would come to this," she said in a voice filled with sadness and resignation. |
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| "Our bodies are our own from our heads down to our toes, When we ask about our meds, don't you treat us like your foes. We are a group of elders who have the right to know, Our rights go marching on ." | |||
| Live Oak Resident Rights Song | |||
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Design by Sleeping Dog Productions |
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