It’s hard to believe that much of the community of Christian believers will begin observing Advent in just a few short days. Advent is all about the renewal of hope and preparation for the future. It’s about new beginnings, and there are precious few of those in the facility were I am currently residing.
I don’t count myself among those here who have little to look forward to in their lives. The outpouring of good wishes I have received has been profoundly moving and touching.
Encouragement like that has made it easier for me to wait patiently for real progress to be seen in my rehabilitation. It’s given me the strength to endure questions I would ordinarily consider to be somewhat silly.
“Is your leg very sensitive,” a therapist asked me with a bright chirp in her voice Friday morning.
“Nah, it doesn’t seem to mind if you call it names,” I responded.
But all around me there remains impending signs of the yuletide season. The resident whose screeching I have previously compared to throwing a cat in a Waring blender has graduated to Christmas carols. For the past several nights, residents have been treated to hours of hearing Silent Night delivered at full volume with a quavering contralto.
The irony of performing Silent Night at 3:00 in the morning apparently is lost on her.
I suppose it could be worse. I could be Grandma got run over by a reindeer.
So, the question becomes: How to while away the hours between physical therapy during the daytime and Christmas concerts at night? Cable television had provided something of a refuge in the past, but in recent weeks I’ve noticed a woeful lack of diversity in the programming offered by the nursing home.
I’ve been a cable TV subscriber for many years now, and the current programming package of expanded basic service contains more channels than I would have thought possible 25 years ago. And yet, despite a four-or-five-fold increase in the number of channels, the number of different shows on those channels actually has decreased.
How many cable channels need to carry reruns of Rosanne as part of their daily programming? And Star Trek, in all its various incarnations, continues to Live Long and Prosper on no fewer than four different cable networks.
The problem is compounded by these cable networks loosing track of the sort of programming that was essentially their reason for existence. “TV Land is now Movie Land,” a recent blurb ran on that network.
Now waitaminnit. TV Land was supposed to be a spot where viewers could find programs that simply weren’t aired anymore. In its early days, TV Land favored viewers with episodes of long-gone series like Route 66 and Honey West.
TV Land is Movie Land? It’s not like there aren’t any cable channels devoted to offering movies on television. If cable programmers had, through some oversight neglected to provide movies on TV then there would be a reason to have a channel with nothing but that. They could call it something like – I don’t know – Home Box Office. Oh wait, HBO is the movie channel that now creates new television series for its viewers.
Not only are there not enough TV series to fill all these new networks’ programming schedules, there aren’t even enough different commercials to occupy the channels. I’ve discovered that late-night television runs enough promotions for Girls Gone Wild to leave even the most hormonally endowed male teenager jaded.
It’s all a matter of corporate control. With the major broadcast companies owning a multitude of the cable channels, it stands to reason that programmers would become risk-averse. Still, I miss the old days when USA network used to run cheesy movies hosted by the cheesy Commander USA and his pal Lefty, whom he communicated with in the manner of Senor Wences.
I am not the only one who has noticed the decline in programming. One resident, who maintains a steady vigil at the resident lounge television set for some 16 hours everyday has been seen moving his wheelchair off in disgust after searching more than 50 channels for some entertainment.
Of course, this stroke-impaired resident was even more disgusted when he wheeled away from the TV set and returned to find me tuned in to Keith Olbermann. Maybe he’s a fan of the O’Reilly Factor.
And so I have found other ways to occupy my time. I became bored with an endless series of murder mysteries and began having dark thoughts towards some disagreeable roommates.
Now card games and board games have become a refuge. I have found a small group of residents who also feared that their brains were turning to mush in the nursing home environment. We played chess, Uno and Pinochle – games that require some measure of strategy in order to win. And so we have created a small community within the larger community, dedicated to keeping its members well-informed and alert.
Come to think of it, it may be a new beginning for Advent after all.