‘Pain as Well as Joy’
To the editor:
Coming into a nursing home is frightening when you are old and fragile. At least, that is what they tell you. Then they send in a variety of folks to care for you.
Lying naked in front of young men would be beyond imagination for me in other years. Many of the caregivers are not perturbed. They treat your body like a piece of meat to be pushed and prodded into proper position.
Some of the nurses are new, just beginning to see that life has pain as well as joy to give. Because they have schedules to keep, they hurry through their assigned work. You soon learn which are the compassionate ones, and which are just doing their jobs.
When one of them gives you a smile or a gentle touch, you are so grateful. It is as if you have fallen into a deep hole and someone has just brought you a lantern.
To those who care: you have been a bright light in my stay at Seashore Point. Thank you.
Hilde Oleson
Provincetown
Fascination and Terror
To the editor:
I just read Ellen LeBow’s essay about the rat that came into her bedroom [“The Year of the Rat,” Nov. 4, page B5] and wanted her to know that I (kind of) liked it.
I am terrified of rats. I am in Provincetown for part of the summer and the rest of the time I live in New York City. I cannot even look at the subway tracks here, for fear and certainty of seeing rats. We have gotten mice in our apartment, and that’s fine by me. We do set traps for them, however, even though they remind me of Beatrix Potter.
I have been wondering lately why it is that people hate and are terrified by rats. I actually believe that it’s an inherited trait that goes back millennia. So, I read your article, without flinching, fascinated, as I tried to master my terror.
Nancy Kahn
Manhattan
Our Gun-Violence Problem
To the editor:
Thanks to Steve Larsen for his thoughtful article on disposing of his firearms and his thought process around the decision [“A Gun Owner Reckons With the Costs of Our Compulsion,” Oct. 28, page A3]. (And no, unfortunately, I have no practical suggestions.)
The United States’s gun-violence problem would be significantly lessened if more people thought less about individual freedom and more about community freedom. That we accept this level of violence every day continues to baffle me.
Jeannette de Beauvoir
Provincetown
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Letters to the Editor
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