Heart Breaking Realities

A women in a care home calls and tells me her friend has not answered her phone for two days.

I drive to the house and bang on the door loudly and wait, I find the door unlocked an cautiously open it and yell her name loudly, a number of times.

I enter cautiously, and try to detect the odor of death to steel myself if that is to be my discovery.

I find the living room, den and kitchen empty and three closed doors down a short hallway.

Which to open, the right, and....there she is finally responding. On the couch I find what I already knew, she cannot see or hear very much. She has a lifeless sad countenance. Her living son moved to Mexico for the cost of living and never checks on her. She has lived too long, all her friends are gone, she eats only once a day, faints often, catches the service bus to Walmart to buy food, and sits...and waits.

This is a burden in aging communities.