Everyday he is there. The television is always on, usually it is some daytime soap opera, occasionally a sports program. He sits in the second seat from the end of a row of chairs. So often is he there one wonders if a plaque bearing his name is affixed to the back of the upright.

Always he dresses better than those that sat near or walk past his place of repose. His shoes always shined, pants always creased, shirt freshly pressed, not many in the facility are so attired.

Day-by-day activities circle about him. Nurses scurry from this person to the next, aides go about their accustomed duties; the custodial staff sweeps and mops around him, as he occupies his place.

Everyday he is in that same place; everyday he witnesses the activities of staff and visitors, cognizant in a manner unknown to others who reside there. Everyday he choses this chair, in this particular sitting area of the nursing home, to sit and converse and to watch the TV and worry about tomorrow.

His name is Howard. For decades he showed up to work on the assembly line at the General Motors plant. The number of automobiles he’d had a hand in assembling was unknown, but if one pictured the cars coming down the line beside Howard for eight hours a day and five days a week for all those years, his efforts were considerable. Now he sits here watching the television, hour by hour, day be day, week after week, month after month for almost three years.

Sitting in a nursing home for all that time seems such a fruitless endeavor, especially when the sitting area beside the TV where you reside is in the middle of the Alzheimer’s  unit. Yet there he sits, day after day, week after week, month after month, and, now, year after year.

His pauses in his TV watching whenever someone passes to greet them with a smile and a gentlemanly nod of the head. But seldom does he speak. He sits where he is committed to doing what he does without regard for the opinion or approval or disregard of others. His is a life defined by the limitation of mental impairment.

Surely his plans for retirement and the enjoyment of his labor had not envisioned this place, this seat, this sitting area and this TV in the center of this place of dreams lost and shattered in unrealized longing.

What brought him here? Where is the fairness that at the end of all his life of labor and dedication, of striving and putting aside for a better tomorrow, he finds himself here in this chair watching this TV. Does ever in the recesses of his mind regret snidely whisper taunting phrases?

Margaret sits beside him. Everyday she sits beside him. And as Howard nods and smiles at those who pass by them Margaret babbles on in an incoherent garble. Howard holds her left hand in his right and occasionally, when her mutterings reach a certain intensity, he stretches out his other hand to affectionately gently pat her shoulder.

Margaret’s stroke happened almost three years ago. Since then Howard comes daily and sits beside her and holding her hand as he’d done so many decades before when he stood at the altar of his God and vowed, “for better for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”