Thinking about Dottie Morken…

She was a nurse of the “Old School” even back in the 1970’s when I first started working in nursing homes. White dress, white stockings, white shoes, and something you basically never see any more, the nurses cap.

She ran her floor tight, her wing of the White Bear Lake Care Center. Cares had to be done. No lolligagging around. Beds made with hospital corners and no sheet or blanket showing and the pillow in the right place. At the time I think most of us thought she was kind of a pain and we dreaded be assigned to her floor.

But she was right.

Her formality and precision I think, looking back, came from a place of wanting to do the best for people who often were in great need. Then and now, perhaps even more now, a nursing home is a place of last resort. Out of money, out of options, it’s the place you must go if you need too much care for home and too little care for a hospital. If there’s a pecking order in health care this is about as bottom as one can get.

So what can you give to people who’ve lost their home and almost everything of what they own except for a few pictures on the wall and a small closet of clothes? Beds made neatly. Rooms that are clean and smell that way. People treated like humans and not cargo. All of those things are love in deeds.

Dottie Morken, white dress, white hose, white shoes, and nursing cap in just the right place on her head was, in her own way, giving gifts of care to people who had virtually nothing left. She understood that even if you’re poor and sick and old that you still should have a well made bed, a clean place to sleep, and people caring for you who do it right the first time and every time. Perhaps some times we thought she was a witch when we wanted to get through things the quick and easy way but in truth she was an angel who watched out for people who couldn’t watch out for themselves.

Forty years later and I’ve returned to work in a nursing home. As I walk through the door to face whatever comes that day I realize she trained me well. Presuming she has passed from this life I hope she knows that a little part of her is still with me every time I try to make things “just so”. And I hope she’s pleased.