Imagine this: You’re 60 years old. You buy a new pair of shoes and develop a blister on your foot. Of course, that has happened many times over the years but this time it doesn’t seem to want to heal. And because that blister won’t heal it gets worse, and your skin starts to break down around it, and your flesh and bones deteriorate beneath. Some time later you’ll find out that it’s because your blood isn’t circulating properly; right now, though, you just feel like your body is failing somehow and you don’t know why and you can’t make it stop. It gets so bad that eventually they have to take your leg off below the knee to save your life. And the following year, it happens to your other leg.

Now you’re 67. You have no legs. Your husband died a year ago and you live in a retirement residence because, although you are perfectly strong and independent mentally, you can’t physically live alone.

On a hot summers day you take a nap in the late afternoon, and wake up a little chilled by the air conditioner next to you. You want to go out to get some fresh air and be warmed by the sun so you press your pendant to request assistance out of bed. No one comes. For more than an hour, no one comes. The bell is wired to ring a reminder every few minutes until it is reset. So, for more than an hour, you have to sit there, listening. Buzz buzz buzz, no one comes, no one comes.

You sit in your bed hating everything. Hating. Everything. You can’t go to the bathroom by yourself, you can’t walk over to the shelf and pick up a book, if you drop the remote control you can’t retrieve it, you can’t even get out of your own damn bed until someone comes to help you. Still, no one comes.

The buzzing and vulnerability and frustration rise within you so much that by the time someone finally does show up, everything you’ve been thinking for all of that time comes out of your mouth in a rush of anger. You just can’t keep it inside anymore. But wait, there’s more. Because you need a mechanical lift it takes two people to help you out of bed. But two out of three people didn’t show up for their job tonight, which is why no one answered your call sooner. Which means you still can’t get out of bed.

You are at the end of your rope so you yell, and the person who actually did show up has to go get the manager because you’re “misbehaving”, which makes the anger even worse. By the time the manager comes in, you feel like you would rather throw yourself onto the floor and suffer the consequences than spend another damn minute in that damn bed…

Anyway, that’s what happened when you didn’t show up for work today. Try a little harder tomorrow, please.

**Posted with permission from the subject**