Eating Alone - Kent Wright

At noontime the modest reception salon with its uncomfortable couch and two chairs is a parking lot for wheel chairs. They are parked chaotically like abandoned cars in a disaster film in front of the doors to the dining room. It is the dining room where the residents of the nursing home can, with varying degrees of success, feed themselves. The room has been functionalized for easy cleaning. To give some sense of hominess there are two undersized fake crystal chandeliers, which glitter rather sadly. They can’t compete with the harsher blue light of large, square fluorescent fixtures mounted tight to the ceiling.

The residents of the nursing home sit each morning, noon and early evening at the same tables, four to a table. The dietician with her clipboard oversees the distribution of the mostly monochromatic food. She wants to make sure each tray is placed in front of the right person. Most of those persons are females. They almost all have the same poodle cut which a woman from a beauty shop in Parker gives them. All the hair is white. Men die first so there aren’t many of them in the dining room. Of the five there currently, only one can carry on much of a conversation. At the second table in from the door there are just three people. A woman who hasn’t spoken for years, Bill, a man who once had his own plane and a landing strip on his farm, but remembers neither, and my Mother. She takes perhaps three or four slow bites of the tasteless lunch before her head nods forward and she falls asleep. The dietician makes a note. She is eating only 25% of her food the report will say.

Recommendation: Consider moving Maxine to the dining room where the staff can assist with feeding.