Alyce: Help!
<laying in bed with no covers on>
Me: What's wrong?
Alyce: Levi, help Barbie! She isn't moving!
<shakes the edge of her mattress pad frantically>
Me: What do you mean?
Alyce: She crawled in here <pointing between the mattress pad and the mattress> and hasn't come out.
Me: Oh yeah?
Alyce: Yes, and now she isn't moving. I think she's dead.
Me: I think Barbie went home. Her shift was over 2 hours ago.
Alyce: No, she is here. You see her?
<again she shakes the mattress pad as if shaking a person back to consciousness>
Me: No, that's your mattress.
Alyce: This is her blue sweater.
Me: I don't think it's her.
Alyce: Levi, help Barbie! She isn't moving.
Me: How did she get in there?
Alyce: She came in about 10 minutes ago and laid down on the bed.
I proceeded to try and convince her that Barbie was not trapped between her mattresses for about 20 minutes with no luck. Alyce was completely convinced of this situation but the reality was vastly different. To her, it was as real as the nose on her face. The disparity between my reality and her reality was immense. In order to make a little sense, there needs to be some back story. Alyce has lived in the nursing home for 5 years. They took her out of a rodent infested apartment and into the custody of the state and APS. While living in the nursing home, she has had many fantastical imaginings which seem as real to her as anything. The metaphysical realm seemed to be more comfortable for Alyce.
Alyce would gaze out at the courtyard for hours and call me in to witness the sundry forms of wildlife which she saw. Of the many things she saw, I can recall vividly most of them. On one occasion there were baby bobcats in the neighbors basement which Alyce could see peering out the basement window. She was so intensely distressed that I went out to assuage her fears, finding that it was merely leaves piled up in the sunken window. Another time a weasel which girded the birch trees had eaten so much that he became too fat to escape from between the two birch trees. I was summoned to rescue the weasel. Another image was a snake in the reeds that was dead and had a rat in his mouth which was having its eyes plucked out by a blackbird. I remember her telling me there was a dead dog on the neighbors patio one winter. "How could they just leave the poor thing out to die?" she asked. It turned out to be a bag of dog food. I even brought her a pair of binoculars to inspect the animals more closely but her reality remained the same.
Lately Alyce doesn't even think she lives there. She imagines that the staff has pulled an elaborate prank on her, switching her room to a different location while at a doctor's appointment. "What apartment number are you Alyce?" "233" and I showed her the label on the door saying 233 but she would not believe me.
We shall not cease from our exploration
And at the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
Alyce encounters the world again, only to explore it anew. All her realities are those of a child. She sees things as if they were brand new to her.
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