Print disruptive nuisance of herself.  Every day, no matter what the weather, except for the deepest snows of winter, she would walk into town.  She carried two purses – one a decoy and one which held her possessions.  Off she would go, her decoy prominently displayed on the front of her walker, her real purse tucked under her arm.  Since everyone in town knew that was what she did, it wasn’t much of a secret.  Once, one of the children in the home, a high school student who didn’t much like school, asked Cassie to review a report she had written.  Her assumption was that Cassie would add more to the report and improve its quality.  On the morning the paper was due, the girl went to get her report.  Cassie had taken a red pen and had written all over the paper, correcting it, and then giving her an F at the bottom.  It was the last time anyone ever asked Cassie about anything related to school. 

 

Fay June was a sweet, gentle man – a homosexual who was doted on by the ladies.  The ladies of the home didn’t know of Fay’s sexual predilection, he was a private man and they were past the age of political correctness, so it was a secret the family kept for him.  The mother of the family quietly went to his room every morning to help him wash and dress.  Fay had a cactus, seven feet high.  He had received it as a little boy and it had grown with him from a few inches to its final splendor.  When Fay died at 93, the cactus died with him in a matter of days.  The irony is that the cactus was as sharp and hard to be near as Fay was soothing and gentle. . . .it was as if all of any negative emotions Fay might have were housed within the cactus. 

 

Alta Beattie was 95 and a wisp of a woman when the family first started the home.  She had survived a double mastectomy and constant life traumas.  The eldest girl could remember going to Alta’s porch and sitting with her when she was a child, not really talking, just spending time together.  Alta was a small woman, seemingly delicate, but with an iron disposition that had served her well.  Alta and her husband had run a country store in a remote little town with a population of 300 on a good day.  The church and the store were the only two official buildings, all other land was taken up by the farms in the valley.  The branches of her family trees lived throughout the valley and in the neighboring towns.  When her daughter came to visit, she would totter in, in worse physical condition than Alta, calling out, “Hi Mommy!”  It was unnerving to hear that coming from so old a voice.  Every morning Alta would wake by 6:00 and put the earpiece of her radio on so she could listen to religious music.  In her high, thready voice she would sing along, her voice the only thing anyone else was hearing.  She was blind but she had a stack of Bible verses about three inches thick.  She would work her way through the pile, reciting the verses softly, each one memorized and in order.  At age 103, she fell and broke her hip.  The doctors said she would never walk again.  In six months she was managing just fine, thank you very much and lived for another three years.

 

Marjorie was Alta’s roommate.  A solemn woman, slim, thoughtful, and intelligent, she had been a teacher for many years but had lost the desire for words.  She sat quietly in her rocker, silently watching the rest of the inhabitants of the home.  She wore of mask of stillness, never letting emotions slip out to mar the surface.  The silence was often inadvertently mistaken for indifference by those who didn’t know better.  After being in the home for several years, Marjorie discovered she had inherited a disease her mother had died a very painfully death from.  Marjorie had no desire to undergo the pain her mother had, and it was