Ted's Last Christmas

I posted this story before Christmas years ago in a longer form.  These were two pieces recently in our local paper, published two weeks apart to conform with their word limits.  Still shorter than it used to be.  I think this condensed version is better.   

In late 1976 I came back from South America completely broke.  I took the first job offered to me, an aide in a nursing home.  They assigned me to the men’s wing where I made beds, gave showers, emptied urinals and bedpans, and coaxed my guys into signing over their Social Security checks to the home.  I also learned the depth to which some people live alone. 

I met Ted there. Ted was a bachelor farmer, an only child of deceased parents.  Ted was living in a mobile home when he suffered a debilitating stroke.  The right side of his body was completely paralyzed.

The other nurse’s aides claimed Ted was so morbidly obese that EMTs had to enlarge the doorway of his trailer with a power saw to get him out.  Ted never walked or talked after his stroke four years earlier.  He communicated by pointing and grunting.

“Ted was morbidly obese?” I asked.

“Before we put him on a diet.” my co-workers said proudly.  “He was 550 when they brought him in.”

I looked down the hall at Ted slumped in his tall back chair behind a tray.  He couldn’t have weighed more than 175.   That would explain the huge folds of loose skin that hung from his body in the shower.  

“I guess that’s why he’s so hungry,” I said.

Ted was beyond hungry.  He was ravenous.  We watched him closely around the snack cart.  When you did you would see Ted inching towards the cart, pushing slowly with his one functioning foot.

Ted betrayed himself by looking up and smiling.  Ted rarely smiled.  If Ted got his left hand within range of the cart, he attacked it. Within seconds his left hand was furiously stuffing food into his gaping mouth.    

It wasn’t only food.  Ted ate toilet paper, tissues, anything.  Ted was in constant danger of choking.  Ravenous gluttony took over Ted’s life.

At Christmas, visitors to the nursing home increased.  But no one visited Ted.   Mail increased also.  All the other residents got Christmas cards.

I delivered mail to my guys.  Every day Ted watched me from behind his tray.  The skin on his face sagged and made his eyes look bigger.  He looked up hopefully.  

“No mail today, Ted.  Maybe tomorrow.”

On the last mail day before Christmas, there were lots of cards to pass out.  When I came to Ted’s room he was slumped sideways in his chair, his eyes glued to me like I was a pan of brownies.

 “Ted, you got a card.”

His eyes grew big.  I straightened him up in his chair and laid the card on his tray.  He fumbled at the envelope, so I opened it.  It was a card from the nursing home administrator.  Every resident got the same cheap card.  Her signature was stamped inside.  Before the card’s message, she wrote “Ted.”   

“Look Ted, she wrote your name.” 

Ted looked up at me and his eyes filled with tears.  He sobbed openly because he got a Christmas card from someone who rarely left her office and didn’t know Ted from a bale of hay. That was the moment I knew I had to get out of that job.  It was just too sad.

* * * * * * * *

On Christmas Eve I headed to my parent’s farm, anxious to be with family.  Christmas on the farm was special.  As I left town, I stopped for gas near the nursing home.  Under the cash register was a rack of candy bars. 

“Give me a couple of those Snickers, would you please?”

I parked, went in the side door, and up the back stairs. It was after dinner but before lights out.  I went to Ted’s room.  He was still in his chair, slumped to one side, sleeping.  His Christmas card was tacked to an empty bulletin board. 

I turned on Ted’s bedside lamp. It was too hot in there, the radiator cooking, air not moving.  Behind it all was the faint smell of urine.  Christmas Eve in the nursing home.  

“Wake up Ted I’ve got something for you.”

I gave him a minute to get used to the light before straightening him up.

“Ted, I brought you a present, but you got to cooperate.  It’s not on your diet and I don’t want you talking to your buddies about this.  But you’re a guy who can keep his mouth shut, right?”

Ted may have gotten the joke, but I couldn’t tell.  When I took a Snickers out of my coat pocket his eyes lit up.

“OK Ted, you’re going to eat this slowly, so you don’t choke.  You understand?”

When Ted realized what was about to happen, he literally began to drool.  I got tissues off his nightstand and wiped his chin.  Then I cut a piece off the candy bar with my pocket knife and put it on his tray.  His left hand flashed out.  The candy was in his mouth instantly.  He looked at me as if I was going to dig it out of his mouth as I had done so often before with other things.

“Chew that good and swallow it before I give you more.”

He did.  I cut off another piece.  We repeated that five times with the first candy bar. 

“You feel OK Ted?”

Ted nodded enthusiastically.

“You don’t feel sick?”

Ted shook his head vigorously in the negative.  I wiped his chin with the Kleenex again.

I took out the second candy bar.  We did it again. 

“This is the last piece, Ted.”

I laid the final chunk of Snickers on his tray. Ted didn’t take it.

“What are you doing, Ted?”

He stared at me.

“It’s yours, Ted.” 

Ted brought his left hand up, pointed at the candy, and pointed to me.

“What the hell Ted?”

He pointed at the candy again and then at me.

Then I understood.  The guy who would eat the envelope his only Christmas card came in was sharing his candy bar with me.  

I ate it.  Ted smiled at me as I chewed the Snickers, his big old eyes bright.  

I believe people talk with their eyes.  I think Ted said thanks.  And Merry Christmas. 

“You’re welcome, Ted.  Merry Christmas to you too.”

I quit the nursing home in the spring.  Ted died that fall.   Choked on ham sandwiches.  I suspect someone didn’t watch the snack cart closely enough.  I will never forget Ted, or the kindness in his eyes.  If we let it, Christmas brings out the best in all of us.