She largely stays in her room
Repeating the same phrase over and over...
Her native language is Finnish,
So I have no idea what it means...
It sounds like "door to door" with a heavy Finnish accent...
The second "door" always more breathy,
Almost a hiss...
Sometimes there's an extra syllable at the beginning...
"Ja door to dua(shhh)), door to door..."
Incessantly...
*
I can tell when she's trying to get up out of bed
Because the volume and tempo increase...
"Door to door"
It's how I know I need to go help her,
So she doesn't slide to the floor...
She is frail and weak,
But she never asks for help...
*
Sometimes the "door to door" isn't spoken...
In this case it's a low chuckling sound...
Almost like she's laughing...
And it is constant, like the aforementioned phrase, for hours at a time...
The gentle clucking if a hen on her brood...
Or ferrets at play, chuckling as they do...
It's the only sound they make...
*
She can be the sweetest little, old lady you ever met,
Or she can be a dog barking at strangers while tied to a leash...
Heavy rain pouring down...
Starburst streetlights multiplying through the water...
From moment to moment, dementia is consistently inconsistent...
*
But that phrase,
"Door to door", "dua to dua",
And the chuckle-clucking,
They dig into your nerves after awhile...
Like water torture...
Drip,... Drip,... Drip,...
Sitting on a couch in the living room
Waiting for the shift to pass...
"Door to door"...
12 long hours broken only by her bathroom breaks and two trips to the dining room,
Lunch and dinner...
*
She is at her sweetest in the dining hall...
She likes to listen to the gossip at the other tables...
Entertained by people watching...
The phrase doesn't happen in public,
So she must be vaguely aware...
"Door to door"...
Usually mostly silent through meals...
Spare attempts at small talk before and after meals...
Always tries to order lunch for me on her tab...
"Eat! Eat!"
But I always demure...
I always bring my own food...
*
"Door to door"...
Aside from during meal times,
She is very cranky...
Very, very cranky...
I was thankful that it wasn't personal...
I have had clients who made their disdain and anger quite personal...
Willfully trying to be hurtful...
Her inner chihuahua spread its generalized rancor evenly over everyone...
'I want to EAT!!!" She will yell when it's getting close to lunch...
She'll yell if there's any sudden noise from the living room...
More of a snap than a tirade...
The kind of chihuahua that nips at fingers and hands that get too close,
Or move too quickly...
*
"Door to door"
"Duah te duah"
Played on a loop that continues to play in my ears for hours after each shift...
"Ja duah te duah"...
"Duah te dua(shhh)"...
Spelled the way the words sound...
Google translate doesn't recognize this as language...
It may as well have been spoken in tongues...
Ancient Egyptian...
World War II code...
An S.O.S. in some variant of vocalized Morse...
Bombs strafing the landscape...
"Door to door"...
*
Maybe it was some kind of prayer...
Repeated in some ritual with Tibetan overtones in respect to repetition...
Spinning the prayer wheel...
Spinning until sleep tunes it out of a distraction filled world...
It's good when she sleeps...
No "door to door"...
No chuckle-clucking...
The times you could be sure she was staying out of trouble...
A break in the acoustic bombardment...
*
This was the last shift I'll ever have to watch over her before I shuffle on down the road...
"Door to door" ...
Opportunities opening up in the outside world that I can't refuse...
She won't really notice my absence...
"Door to door" is one of those things that has been burned into my memory...
Tattooed into my ears...
In the dog park below the third story apartment window,
There's a green...
Just across the street from a pond with a fountain in the center...
Turtles basking on a small stone levy...
A short distance from that,
the road home...
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