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Survival
I am convinced that nursing homes, hospitals, rehabilitation and physical-therapy centers are only for healthy people.
When I was in the hospital, I realized how alert I had to be in order to stay alive. There is no punishment for hospitals, or nursing-home workers, from the surgeon on down, to the least of the flunkeys when they commit crimes against humanity.
I concluded, when I was in the rehabilitation-center that negligence can cause instant death unless the patient is always vigilant.
As I fought for my survival, I cried every day, because, I was reminded of both my mother and father, ill, and neglected in nursing-homes. They both lasted less than one year there. This is another crime against humanity with no punishment in sight.
I was referred for outside physical-therapy by the Rehabilitation Center when I got home; as the ordeal in a very unhealthy, health plan. I worked out on a bicycle, a treadmill, and I also lifted weights with my feet. The therapy-room was an old apartment of miniature size, overheated by steam. The owner-therapist advised me not to work-out if it was too warm; to wait until the other clients left, then to open a window to air out the place.
The only reason I continued to go to therapy there was that I am naturally lazy, and this therapy-center was right across the street from my apartment house, so I could go there in any weather: rain, sleet or snow.
I have only one wish from G-d, and that is, to help me heal, so that I could walk into the hospital, nursing home and physical therapy center and shout:
"See, I survived this too!"
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About the Book
Claire Helen Siegal believed that the greatest evil in life was not to fulfill one’s potential. Through the written word, a sensitive, intelligent, and acerbic voice emerges. In this autobiography—published posthumously by her executrix, Elaine Levitt—Claire’s poetry, essays, and narrative text paint a portrait of its creator. Before she died, Claire began her quest for self-understanding through her writing.
From her writings, a flesh-and-blood woman emerges. She blends her variegated images to produce a self-portrait that paints her as she was in life: a vulnerable, willful, innocent, cynical, and always unforgettable woman. An idealist, Claire yearned for the ideal, but faced reality’s hard, metallic edge with determination. Hers was a biting-edge, sardonic wisdom, learned at the expense of innocence.
Claire gave herself the moral mandate to put together this unconventional autobiography forcing you to see her importance, so her soul could have peace. She didn’t want sympathy or compassion; she wanted affirmation of the life she lived, as if this could make it meaningful.
Her life was a study in contrast; innocent and cynical by turns. Her persona is recognizable in all her writings. She was alone. G-d was not in her life. She was Jewish and proud of it, but she removed G-d from the equation on the basis of what the Holocaust did to her family. She questioned everything, letting nothing escape her notice.
You will not soon forget her, or the images her life evokes.
About the Author
Claire Helen Siegal was many things: teacher of early childhood education, social worker, therapist, guidance counselor, nationalist, Universalist, and Mensa member. She loved animals, nature, traveling, good food, and culture. She never married. She died of cancer at the age of seventy-nine.