"On Retreat" at the Terraces

There are ways that being in a nursing home (even using that phrase used to give me the "willies") is a little like being on a meditation retreat.  How, one might ask?  It is the moment to moment experiencing of your life that links them.  Here, sitting in a bed by the window, you have the opportunity to note the particular-ness of the passage of time, from first waking to the very early morning light in the sky beyond your little compound, to the warm sensation when you have swallowed a pain pill and the deep ache in your shoulder begins to recede, to the arrival of your breakfast tray, the arrival of the CNA to announce that it's "shower day," and so on .... You are a captive audience, no longer in active mode pursuing any number of your desires.  You are frozen in place.  And the parade of nursing home life goes on outside your door.  As you try to read a good book - Krasny's Spiritual Envy - you hear the distressed patient down the hall calling for help, or the beeping of a call button asking for help from somewhere else, or the vacuuming of the rug in the hallway.  Which of the sensations will hold you now?  The minutiae of existence are there for you to witness, and there is a hypnotic repetitiveness about it.  Nicely dressed residents of the nearby retirement community walk by outside, with canes and straw hats, having their constitutional, and for a second you envy their freedom.  Then you remember to feel grateful for your health, the wellbeing of your mind, and the love you know surrounds you out there....You are mindful of the body both inside and out, and you know that you are strong enough to stroll again, on the city streets, or the beach at Bodega.
In the middle of the night I had trouble sleeping again, and put my attention on my breath and body, breathing evenly, trying not to listen to the patient who was protesting down the hall.... the more I returned to the body this way the farther away the disturbance felt.  I debated whether or not to listen to some beautiful music on my phone (Bach's St. Matthew, for instance), and then decided to return to  sleep some more, though the sky was becoming beautifully pearly and  light - a Vermeer early morning.
It is early Sunday morning on a 4th of July weekend, and I have another long day of noticing phenomena.  No activities to distract, as the therapy staff is off (deservedly).  It will be hot outside today, as it was yesterday, but inside this place it is cool and comfortable, without air conditioning, and the voices of the Philippina nurses and CNAs will softly travel the hallways, gently lilting.  Again I will feel enormously alone, but I will have my mindfulness as companion, and my deep gratitude that I am really fine now.  Alone, yes ... fine, yes.  This I can handle.