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A big question mark is what I see on many faces as I walk into rooms in various nursing homes. Why the question mark? Many of the people are filled with uncertainty. What will happen next week? Where will I be?

Will I have enough money?

Will there be medicines?

What will the food be like?

These may be fairly normal questions for anyone as they advance in age. For many there is a degree of certainty and an ability to make decisions for themselves or at least to participate in the decision making process. Others are not afforded that dignity.

In the last six months many things have stirred the pot to cause uncertainty among the people in the nursing homes here. With Romania’s desired entrance into the European Union (EU) in January 2007, there is a jumbled rush to do what can be done to meet what regulations they can meet without spending much money. As of today not one of the state nursing homes in our judits (county) is even close to meeting the regulations governing the housing of the elderly.

In the past there seemed an almost constant shifting of people from room to room within the nursing homes, but now the process has enlarged to shifting people from one nursing home to another. Oddly in all this so often I am the only link for these older people and what is going on in other nursing homes. I’m not just a link for the older people, but also for the staff. For example, last month I was working in a room in the home in Pecica and the Director of the home came in. She asked if I had been to the “new” home in Petris. “Yes, I was there last week.” “How does our home compare with that one?” And the conversation went on from there. She had only been to two of the other state homes in the area and was interested in finding out about the others. Most of the time though it is one of the older people asking what it’s like at one of the other homes where they have been told they will be moved in the near future. It is nice to be able to give them good news when I can and tell them it is a nice place, that the food will be better, or that it will be warmer there. But sometimes I have to give them bad news and see if there is a  way to avoid that move. It is hard for me to understand. Maybe it is a carryover from their days living under Ceausescu, but they do not seem to have any control over where they live. They accept that they are going to be moved whether it is from room to room or city to city and that’s the end.  This week I was in a small private nursing home where the people are fairly independent. They had just been given the news that by May 1 they would need to find other lodging because the Romanian government was going to be renting this home to house some handicapped people. Another shuffling of people, but why?

I mentioned the “new” home in Petris. The residents of other homes ask about this place. I don’t know the history of it before we arrived in 2001, but since we have been here it has been an orphanage, a delinquency center, and now (as of November 2005) an old folks home. It is billed as the “new” home as it has just become a nursing home, but that is the only sense in which it is “new”. Like many facilities here, it has large rooms, high ceilings, cracked plaster walls, and is dark and gloomy. The outside of the building has been renovated and looks stately and there is ongoing work to renovate another building on the grounds that will allow more people to be moved to Petris in the near future.

All that being said, what can I do about those questioning looks I see in their faces? I can assure them that in whatever home they stay in our county, I will find them because I visit them all. So I will still be there to visit with them--maybe even more often depending on where they end up. More importantly I can continue to point them to the One who said He would never leave them.

 “For He Himself has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." "

Hebrews 13:5