Old people are people too.

This is what my dear friend, and former roommate said about her grandpa when I asked how he was doing.

I found it so moving that I wrote it down on a sticky note in the middle of our conversation.  It made me tear-up.

Julia taught me so much about loving old people.  She is so good at it!  She taught me how to make sugar-free cookies, how to hold their hand, how to laugh & respond to their incomprehensible comments, and how to ask about their families and childhoods.

Julia taught me how to treat people like people even when people smell terrible.

Her grandpa isn't in the greatest health and it's so tough when your emotional and physical health start failing all at once.  Growing old is hard because I've seen and smelled and touched it and if it weren't for growing old and failing health, I wouldn't have had a job in college.  I've worked at two nursing homes.

Slow-dying is hard.  Your mind decays along with your body and you do things that in the prime of life you could only imagine doing: wetting your bed, throwing food on the floor, falling out of a wheelchair...being in a wheelchair.

But regardless, all of those old people that I've played scrabble with over the years, whose messes I have cleaned up for $10/hour, and whose bedsore bandages I have changed I know one thing:

THEY ARE HUMAN BEINGS.

For this reason, I loved my healthcare experience and I will never forget the PEOPLE that I met, served, and formed relationships with, difficult though it was--it was so hard.

And I'll never forget how Julia taught me that making someone smile is a skill whose worth cannot be underestimated.

I hope her grandpa has a week of easy smiling, don't you?