WINDOWS ON 
RED BANK

Part Two of a Story on Assisted Living in New Jersey Published in the Two River Times and AHHerald on March 25, 2004

ASSISTED LIVING IN NEW JERSEY - PART TWO

It was a cold late one night in 1982. I was stopping by for a minute to pick up something at by friend's apartment in the Twin Gables. I parked in the driveway between the Navesink House and the Twin Gables. It was late, close to 10 PM; I was hoping that the senior ladies that had put bumper stickers on my windshield two weeks before for parking in their driveway were asleep. I went inside for about five minutes and returned to my car.

As I approached the car I became aware that there was something or someone in the back seat. Startled, I slowly looked into the back seat window. All I could see was a small gray head level with the top of the back seat. Opening the door I found Emily sitting in the middle of the back seat wearing only a pink night gown. She was about 85 years old, weight about 75 pounds frail and looked at me with childlike frightened eyes. With the gentlest voice I could muster after being startled I asked, “Hello, what are you doing out here…it’s cold…where did you come from?” Of course I knew the answer, she must have been from the Navesink House.

With the intonation of a child she said, “I came from in there” looking up at the Navesink House “they try to keep me inside and not let me out but I don’t want to go to bed early so I sneak out.” Telling her it was very cold out I put my coat around her and told her not to move. I ran to the side door and rang the bell. A voice directed me to the front entrance. When I told the front desk what had happened they knew immediately it was Emily. She had gotten out again and said they would send someone down to the side door to get her. I ran back to the car to wait.

Emily was shivering as I climbed in the back seat. I bundled the coat around her and put my arm around her. “Oh, you keep me warm” were her first words. “My father used sit with me like this when we took our train car down to the shore when I was little.” While waiting for the nurse staff to open the side door she told me she had lived on Park Avenue in New York but came to the shore every year to the big hotels. She and her sisters had to stay with the servants and were not allowed in the front hotels.

That was as far as the conversation got when the door opened and the staff took her back inside. I knew she was another living time capsule that I would have to talk to again. She was child like in gestures and stature. I came back to visit Emily over the next couple of months and learned a great deal about her and her family in the early 1900’s. These seniors are a wealth of information about our past and strikingly similar to our lives today.

I guess that is the point of my story. As we become the care takers to our parents and grandparents we should find out all we can about their lives before we became the “center of the universe.” Mom has passed away also so there is really no one I can ask about what happened then. I have to rely on other relatives to learn about his and her life. So maybe it is time to sit down and ask them questions before we can’t anymore. After all how can we fully understand who we are if we don’t know where we came from?