Paul Tedesco
I have an Nh.D. It’s similar to a Ph.D., except with an N. This one means Doctorate in Nursing Homes. I got it at the University of Experience. One day my mother moved into a nursing home. On another she died there. What happened in between changed my life.There’s No Place Like (Nursing) Home - Stories of Dementia, Dying, and Peeing on the Christmas Tree is a book for my friends, almost all of whom I haven’t met. There are 125 million of them across the country. They’re called Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers. They, like me, are getting older. So are their parents. Many, my friends and their parents, are or will end up in nursing homes. Most who do will die there. Whether my friends learn to smile in between can change their lives too.The book is a short folksy memoir, a compendium of stories, real ones, filled with heartbreak and agony, as well as laughter and mirth. The stories are about what I saw, learned, and felt, and how I learned to smile again, then and now. An old man mistaking a Christmas Tree for a toilet will do that.Three-part dementia-inspired operas will do it as well. So will listening to your saintly mom call a white nurse a 'honky.' I cried, long and often, but in learning to look in the right places, I found laughter amidst my tears. In the midst of the tempest, I also found serenity for a troubled soul. So can my friends.
