BINGO and Old People

I’ve played bingo before, but it’s been a while. I was with a bunch of old people the last time I played bingo. We were visiting an old lady we knew and visited at least weekly. She happened to be playing bingo one afternoon and they let me join in. I was about ten years old and I won!!! I chose a stuffed, white unicorn off the prize cart and decided that I liked bingo a lot. In the intervening eight years, I’d never played bingo.

Today, I played bingo again. There is a bingo at the Veterans’ Home every Sunday afternoon and usually one on holidays too.  Today happens to be a miniscule, but government recognized, holiday; I think it’s Columbus Day or something like that. Anyway, most of the staff have the day off and so they have a bingo because many of the residents will attend and enjoy it, but it doesn’t take many staff members to put one on.

I arrived and had some difficulty figuring out where to be and such, but was soon put to work going to get the weaker residents and pushing them down to the auditorium where the bingo would be. Once we were all ready for the bingo, I sat down next to Bruce* who has lost both of his legs and most of the movement in his arms to chronic sickness since arriving at the home over a decade ago.

I was happy to be able to work with Bruce throughout the bingo, but it was genuinely sad to see his lack of ability to control himself. I saw tears in his eyes multiple times because he couldn’t even lift his arm and push over the tab on a bingo card or muster up enough of a voice to tell me what floor of the building he lives on. One of the other volunteers told me that when she started there over a decade ago, his sons used to come take him for walks and to go fishing in the pond. Now he can’t even play bingo by himself. May you find grace and peace, sir.

*Please note that names have been deliberately changed to comply with HIPPA requirements.