Visiting The Unvisited

Today I woke up and the first thing that hit my mind was Aquilino. Last week when I visited him, for some reason I can´t remember I asked him when was his b-day and he told me it was the 7th of march. Well, I don´t know why I thought today monday was 7th, so I bought him a nice small piece of deliciouscarrot cake and a papaya milkshake and I headed to the nursing home. So I was all happy about surprising him and stuff and when I saw him and whished him happy b-day, he was like, ohh thanks very much son, but you came a day earlier. Lol, if he could see the embarrasing expression on my face he would´ve been laughing. So he told me it was nice of me going there to spend some time with him and he was happy which ultimately made me happy. He is doing good in terms of health, only his vision impairment affects him but he´s learned how to deal with it and the thing that really impact me strong is the fact that he seems happy all the time and has always a song in his lips and when someone approaches him he always has something to say and share. I really wish his children took more time to visit him and make him feel loved and important. Yes, I can understand nowdays why in some cases we children have to take a sad decision to take grandparents and parents to nursing homes when there is no other way, but boy, one thing is to take that decision and the other thing is to just leave them there alone and not visiting them like they ought. It is so sad. Aquilino I met while I rotated on that nursing home when I was still finishin my PT studies at college and ever since then I sort of adopted him and I´ve been visiting him year after year everytime I am in town. Three weeks ago when I visited him after almost a year of being out of Panama, I started talking to him and I didn´t expected him to recognized me for he can´t see, and he surprised me. After 5 min. of talking to him, he was like, hey, I know you, you are....Josh. That was it. I got all emotional cuz last time after I spent another 8 months out of Panama and I visited him, he couldn´t recognize me and I had to tell him who I was, so I wasn´t really expecting him to recognize me, but well, that was the wonderful case. But this time, I when I leave, he won´t have to wait to long to hear from me again. My panamenian friend Sandra who I already introduce to Aquilino is gonna pay him a visit every now and then and she will take over while I am out. When I was about to leave the NH I ran into another grandpa who I met 3 years ago while I was there, and it was nice to see him still alive and feeling good. It was a very productive morning for me.