Good Night Irene

     It was the end of the shift and I was at the nurses station charting tonight.  One of the nice things about working the late shift is that it's fairly quiet.  Certainly, you don't have the fuss of the front office staff and visitors.  They are all well and good, but the peeps I like hanging with the most, are the patients.  Especially the older, more confused (pleasantly) ones.  

     Bob is just such a person. (The names have been changed to protect me from HIPAA laws) Bob is a Dear, but he is rather confused and tonight he was a bit worse than usual, and he was hell bent on getting to a bus station.  Fortunately, he can't walk (in the sense that it is safer for him as he is less of an elopement risk).  He does self propel himself around in a wheelchair, but doesn't get far and he doesn't get there fast.  Nor can he seem to get there in a straight line.  It's sort of like watching a slow, gentle, bumper car. But it gives him exercise and he seems to enjoy it.  

     Bob has a friend in a room just down the hall.  Pete isn't particularly confused, but he likes Bob and he acts as sort of a guardian angel.  He will come and talk to Bob and will even push him around the facility while they chat away, though only one half of the conversation is comprehensible.  Well, neither gentleman could sleep tonight - though that is not unusual for them.  Pete was pushing Bob by the nurses station tonight when I heard him do something I had not heard him do before, Pete started to sing.  It was an old song called, "Good Night Irene".  That's one of the cool things you get when you work geriatrics, you hear about lots of the old things, like stories and songs.  I'll even confess right here and now, that I like Laurence Welk.  Lord knows I've been exposed to enough of it.  You can't walk down the hall on a Sunday without it coming at you in stereo from the different rooms of patients that are watching it.

     Funny aside here - before I recognized the song, Pete sang out the line, "stop rambling".  I thought he was just making something up, singing to Bob...because, well, Bob really was rambling.  Ha, but then he continued and I realized it was an actual lyric to a song.  Though I've got to wonder if that's what made Pete think of this particular song in the first place.  

     But then the most amazing thing happened.  After awhile, Bob started to sing along with Pete.  No rambling.  He knew every word.  So off they went, Pete pushing Bob on a slow pace, as they both sang together with hardy voices, "Good Night Irene!".  It was so touching and surprising that those of us at the nurses station about lost it.  I know I started tearing up.  Oh, the sweet things that happen in a rehab unit in the middle of the night. 

Good Night Irene
by Huddie Ledbetter, aka Leadbelly 
first recorded in 1933

Irene good night, Irene good night, 

Good night Irene, good night Irene, 

I'll see you in my dreams. 

Last Saturday night I got married, 

Me and my wife settled down, 

Now me and my wife we are parted, 

I think I'll go out on the town. 

Sometimes I live in the country, 

Sometimes I live in town, 

Sometimes I take a great notion 

To jump in the river and drown. 

I love Irene, God knows I do, 

I'll love her 'til the seas run dry, 

But if Irene should turn me down, 

I'd take morphine and die. 

Stop rambling, stop your gambling, 

Stop staying out late at night, 

Go home to your wife and your family, 

Stay there by your fireside bright.