I've been "Vito'ed"
When I was heading over to see my grandfather, my sister asked me "have you met Vito yet"? I hadn't. But the other day I was finally treated to the wonder that is Vito.
Vito is a little, old, Italian gentleman who, I'm told, was my grandfather's first roommate at Harborside. He wasn't too happy with my grandfather being there as he kept screaming about "my casa, my casa". You see, Vito suffers from a touch of dementia as does my grandfather and thought it was his apartment, not a hospital room. My mom would come to find Papa's TV remote missing and in Vito's desk drawer, things misplaced. They ended up moving my grandfather out into a different room, with George, whom I mentioned previously.
On a side note, I just found out that George is married and his wife is at a seperate nursing home. Apparently there are limited amounts of "male" beds at these places and that place was completely full. So he doesn't see his wife and they are apart. That's one of the saddest things I've ever heard.
Vito tools around in his wheelchair, IV bottle with "nourishment" (he refuses to eat solids even though he can) attached. He doesn't use his arms to wheel himself, instead only using one foot and peetering up the hallway in little increments. You can see his IV bottle coming by the window as he approaches. Here comes Vito! He has a little house arrest anklet on because every now and then he makes a break for it. My sister was leaving one day and Vito thought it was his opportunity to go "over the wall" (or out the door). Kathy had to turn him around and wheel him back in.
The thing that really stands out about Vito, though, is that he speaks completely in Italian. In fact, he has entire conversations with my Mom (and tries to with me)...the only problem is that neither of us speak Italian at all. My grandfather doesn't understand him either. He can speak English and has (fluently!), but keeps going right back into Italian despite telling him we don't speak it. So Vito just goes on, yacking it up and we laugh when it looks like he's laughing and nod seriously when it looks like a graver tone. At one point, I was talking to my Mom when Vito started up. She turned to him and said "I'm sorry Vito, what was that?" which cracked me up because she can't understand what he's saying anyways, so why the need for repeating? I teased her about that the entire ride home.
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