Trash or Treasure- a story

The elderly woman sat on the edge of her bed, head downcast, arms limp in her lap, refusing to answer the simplest questions of her Nurse. Day after day, she sat, tears coursing down her cheeks. Frustrated the Nurse went to the station intent on getting someone from the family to come in. After a few minutes she knew it was fruitless. No one was going answer her call or come visit, nor help the Nurse with her patient. She returned to the room, got the woman's night clothes ready, helped her change and put her to bed. Lights out.

Early the next morning as a different Nurse helped the woman dress, laughter resounded in the hallways. Children from a local school had come to visit. Great, thought the Nurse, more clay mounds and painted pictures. Just what the ward needed, more trash.

Its evening again. The Nurse from the previous day hesitates to go into the elderly woman's room. It hurts so to see her quiet tears. Taking a deep breathe she enters to find the woman sitting in a chair holding a picture and a clay statue. The woman is misty eyed, but not sad. She is smiling the smile of someone remembering something.

The Nurse asks the woman what it is she is holding. With shaky hands the old woman holds up the clay first. " My boy made one for me one time." she said.

Then she holds up the paint smeared paper. " She was so proud of that painting. We had it framed you know. It hung in the hall my whole life."

The Nurse looked at the two items wondering just what the old woman saw in the items she was holding. They would be put in the garbage as soon as the room was cleaned.

The old woman finished getting ready for bed, climbed in and set her picture and clay statue by the lamp.

"You know, they never asked me. They just threw it all away. All my treasures. I don't have any thing left to remind me of my youth, or my children's childhood. All gone, you know, its all gone. They could have just asked me.

The Nurse paused in the doorway, wondering what in the world the woman was babbling about. Well, she thought, old age does that to you. Its too bad, she was a sweet old woman other than the trash she managed to collect once a week when the children visited.

As she turned out the lights, she made a mental note to the custodians to throw out the paper and clay when they cleaned her room tomorrow.