The Blessing of the Man who Cleaned

A Fiction Story:

There once was a man who worked in a senior care facility.  He was a simple man without much education, stolid and dependable.  The care home was not the worst of its kind; it served as a dumping ground for incontinent grandmothers and irascible old fathers with failing memories.  Relatives came and went, mostly around the holidays, entering patient rooms in a flurry of forced good cheer after having sternly reminded the children not to wrinkle their noses at the smell in the room.  The residents were adequately cared for. Food inoffensive to delicate digestive tracts was served regularly; pills were distributed in paper cups with sips of tepid water.

Those who were mobile had the freedom to wander the halls.  Bedridden or fragile patients kept to their rooms.  They were tended to, more or less.  The more aggressive or impatient, the less the standard of care.  Charts were kept to make sure Mr. Jones was turned regularly.  Bed sheets were stripped and replaced.  A note on a chart reminded nurses and staff that Mrs. Albertson had a tendency to walk around nude so they should be sure to check on her before any visitors.  But she never had visitors.

In this building, the old man was assigned the unpleasant but necessary duty of cleaning the patients.  He could mostly manage on his own, but with a heavier man or woman he would call for assistance to roll a stiff or recalcitrant body.  While he cleaned he kept up a stream of simple conversation, distracting the patient from the necessary indignity of having a stranger gently loosen feces from his private parts.

“How are you doing today, Mr. Jones?”, he’d ask as he gently gave a sponge bath to a quiet old man whose family hadn’t visited in months.  “You get a chance to see your shows yet?”  Dip, squeeze, wipe, set down the sponge to dry off an arm with a soft cloth, cleaning extremities before moving on to more intimate areas.  “I know you want to see your shows.  They are having the season premiere of that police drama you like.”  Mr. Jones smiled just the slightest bit to acknowledge this bit of humanity.  He had lost the ability to speak a few strokes ago but his brain still worked well enough.  As the attendant cleaned and talked, Mr. Jones was able to relax and enjoy the distraction.  The old man was the only “visitor” he had; he discounted the other staff because they mostly came and went without talking, treating him like another piece of furniture to be tended to dispassionately.

After he had finished with Mr. Jones, he moved across the hall to his only other patient of the day.  Mrs – MISS Abernathy, she insisted on being called – was his most challenging patient.  She had been in the facility for twelve years, stubbornly refusing to die, she said, until fees for keeping her alive completely exhausted her considerable fortune.  A nephew had somehow gotten a power of attorney over her and her estate and had squirreled her away in a home well below her former standard of living.  She persisted in living long after everyone expected her to kick the bucket, and she often bragged about her tenacity while she chivied the old man as he went about his work.

She had been in a steep decline lately, though, and with the sixth sense he had developed over the years, he knew here time was likely near.  He treated her with the same compassionate dignity as always, even as she nagged at him and complained.

“Why are you so late?  I wanted to watch ‘Jeopardy’ and now that you’re here I’ll miss it.”

“Well, Miss Abernathy, you are welcome to watch and listen and I’ll just work as quickly and quietly as I can.  Maybe I can help you with some of the clues.”

“Huh, I doubt it.  This is a smart show for smart people.  You know they have lawyers on there all the time.  I hate lawyers’, she muttered as he set up his tray and ran warm water into a pan.

“I’m not too fond of them myself, Miss Abernathy, but I suppose everyone has to make a living.”  As was his custom, he started by gently washing her arms and legs, being extremely gentle around old bruises from injections or  IV sites.  He raised the head of the bed and turned on the TV for her.  As Alex Trebek introduced the three contestants, he leaned her forward to wash the back of her neck and her shoulders.  Her skin was paper thin; spidery veins ran close to the surface and the sharp points of bones jutted out as he worked the gentle cleanser in.  He moved down her back, lay her back on the mattress, then called in a female aide to witness the cleaning and help him.  He had never once deviated from proper protocol and had never once had even the most crotchety or confused patient accuse him of any inappropriate contact. He cleaned with a light hand and avoided looking at his patients’ private parts, looking only enough to make sure they were clean and distracting them with conversation.  Miss Abernathy made a great show of concentrating on the Jeopardy clues as they both pretended this was not an awkward but necessary imposition.  Soon enough the job was done, the aide departed to continue her rounds, and the old man gathered up his things to put away before the end of his shift.

He was almost out the door when the old lady’s voice called him back.

“John!  Your name is John, isn’t it?”  It was Jim, but he didn’t correct her.  He stepped back into the room and waited with an attentive look on his face.

“John, I’ll probably be dead soon.  You’re the only person in this damn prison to treat me like a human being.  I hear the aides and nurses talking about patients all the time, making jokes and rude comments.  I know in my soul that you’ve never said a word about anyone you’ve ever worked with here, am I right?”

“No ma’am, I never have.  I suppose that my job, seeing what I see and having the job of cleaning and touching, I think that’s like a sacred trust.  It would be a big sin for me to talk about anybody.  I don’t have that right.”

“I know.  I know.  I’ve been here too long and I’ve seen everything.  I used to be able to walk these halls.  I want to tell you, John.  You spend your days with your hands covered in other peoples’ piss and shit, but you’re going to get to heaven before any of us.  You know that?  You believe that, John.  I know you’ll get in before me.  Just remember that.  You’re cleaner than any of us.  I just wanted to tell you that, John, before I have to go.  Now let me watch my show before Final Jeopardy.” And with that Miss Abernathy turned her head back to the television and the old man walked out of the room, put away his cleaning supplies, and walked out the front door to the bus stop for the ride home.  And Miss Abernathy knew the answer to Final Jeopardy, and cackled in triumph, and died later that night.  Her body was clean and fresh for the funeral home to come and collect, and there was just enough money left in her estate to cover the cost of a simple funeral, untended by any family or friends, save for one man,  a simple cleaner in a senior care facility who signed his name only as “John” in the visitor book.