Inevitable

I’ve written, before, about Miss Lucy…

She was among the first patients assigned to me when I began work as a hospice volunteer. As I recall, I fell in love during our first visit.

Miss Lucy loved flowers…all flowers. Most appreciated was the large pot of mauve hydrangeas I tucked into a corner of her window last spring. She liked the curtains opened.

There was a small, unattended bird feeder just outside the window. I always wondered if birds would perch there if I filled it. I bought the seed, tossing it into the trunk of my car amongst an assortment of variously filled, environmentally friendly grocery sacks. I wonder if it’s still there…

Miss Lucy died two weeks ago. Ironically, after a year of service, she had been removed from hospice care about a month before.

After completing a six-week hospice volunteer course, the director presented me with a pre-printed “Certificate of Completion”, asking that I hold still while her photographer shot smiling stills of the occasion. A couple of weeks later, a glossy newsletter appeared in my mailbox. I made the cover.

None of the available assignments were convenient, so I accepted the least burdensome; three women housed in a nursing home thirty minutes from my house. Adding to my convenience, two of my patients shared a room.

Ms. Blackmon occupied the far bed, though until the last, I only saw her bent double in a wheelchair. The director cautioned me not to expect too much. Ms. Blackmon was uncommunicative. I watched as she spoon-fed Bible verses, and cranked the volume on gospel music acquiesced to through silence.

The next week, I visited the girls’ room alone, bypassing her sleeping room-mate in my approach to Ms. Blackmon. Remembering the sneer pinching her chapped lips as Jim Nabors crooned “How Great Thou Art”, I ignored the CD player and began to talk.

“How are you today?”

“Did you eat your breakfast?”

“Was it good?”

“No? Well, it wasn’t like it was at home, was it?”

The next week I plucked Shane, ripe from the football field, to join me.

“How are you today?”

“Did you eat your lunch?”

“This is my son, Shane. He plays football. Do you like football?”

All at once, Ms. Blackmon’s back straightened, slightly. Her eyes, under a blue, hand-crocheted skullcap, sparkled.

“I like football.” And, just as quickly, her back regained its inquisitory posture.

Her room-mate, Savannah, had given up. Her family was present during my first visit. Savannah sat on the side of the bed, leaning slightly against her daughter’s prominent shoulder, as she raised a spoonful of pabulum in the direction of her mother’s mouth. As we approached, Savannah managed a weak, drooling smile, while her daughter encouraged us to call her “if you ever need anything”. In the seven months I visited Savannah, it was to be the only time I ever saw her daughter.

In the interest of jumping the highest hurdle early, I always crossed to Ms. Blackmon first. As her head descended again in the direction of her lap, I smoothed the blanket covering Savannah, before perching, gingerly, on the edge of her bed. Often, an untouched tray of food crowded my perch.

“Savannah?” She always appeared to be sleeping.

“Savannah? It’s Stacye. Your lunch is here. Wake up and let’s eat some lunch, ok?”

She always woke with a smile, preceding the same three words.

“I’m so tired.” Pernicious anemia stole the volume from Savannah’s speech.

“I know, honey. Should I let you sleep?”

Sometimes she didn’t even bother to answer, turning into her pillow with drawn eyes. Sometimes, though, she tried.

A slight lift of her bonneted head from the pillow was my signal. Taking her shoulders, I helped her up before swiveling her kneels into a sitting position beside me. Savannah was a fan of iced tea. She ate very little, but her tea glass was almost always drained.

Miss Lucy lived in the same nursing home on a far hall. I usually saved her for last. For one thing, the “Alzheimer’s Hall” was on my way. For another, I chose to end my visits on a positive note…and Miss Lucy was sunshine.

Sometimes I found her sleeping. After several such incidents, I left her that way. More often though, I found her with her good eye trained on whatever television program her caretakers had chosen for her.

”Hey, Sweetheart! How are you feeling today?” Miss Lucy occupied the bed closest to the window, allowing me ample time to finish my greeting before reaching her bedside.

As my hands went to the curtains, she answered. Most days, bright sunshine lit her oiled face before she finished.

“Oh….I’m alright…” Years of protecting the mound of snuff, deposited in front of her bottom teeth, had trained her speech.

We had a ritual. Immersing the flowers I brought her in water, I brought them close to her right side, her good eye.

“Look what I brought you!”

“Oh…they are so pretty…” A succession of strokes had robbed her of movement, but I still saw her hand as she raised it to touch the blooms.

On good days, she regaled me with tales of earlier times; her daughter’s triumphs on the basketball court, bus-rides across town to work in the “white woman’s house”, and her “no count” man. And, good days were frequent. Bad days were only designated “bad” because I chose not to interrupt the rhythmic rise and fall of her slight chest.

Ms. Blackmon was the first to go. One Saturday I gingerly pushed the latest copy of “Sporting News” under her perpetually bent head. The next, I found her writhing, senselessly, in her bed. The sweats she had worn since I’d known her had been replaced by a worn hospital gown. And, minus the cap, her gray plaits were sparse and haphazard. I looked around for assistance, and finding none, dialed my director. Savannah worried the lip of her blanket as I listened.

The director encouraged me to find Ms. Blackmon’s nurse who took one look, and seeing nothing out of place, returned to her desk. I left thinking dying shouldn’t be so hard, especially when anticipated.

Much less dramatic, Savannah’s exit began just weeks later. I entered a room crowded with family, and remnants of the previous night’s vigil. They were happy to see me, beating a quick retreat. Occasionally, I felt that she heard me. Regardless of my pertinence I continued to talk.

Two nights later I entered a room empty except for Savannah, whose bed had been moved against the wall. She lay in a quiet I chose to honor, employing touch in place of words. The pallets that had decorated her room on my previous visit remained. I left, assured by their caring. It took Savannah two weeks to die.

Two down, one to go…

Miss Lucy thrived. During one visit, despite her inert state, I felt compelled to restrain her as she threatened an orderly who deigned to suggest she give the pummeled green beans another go. Her weight was up. Her spirits soared, and after a solid year of hospice care, her insurance company refused to renew. A month later, she died.

I’m not suggesting a relationship. I’m not implying any culpability on the part of her insurance company. But, I am struck by the irony…

My inspiration to become a hospice volunteer sprung from experience. During the final days of his life, my ex-husband’s journey, and more importantly the lives of our children, was greatly eased by the angelic presence of a hospice volunteer. As I watched her minister to those I loved, I vowed to give back.

Last weekend, I stowed my name-badge in the back of a dresser drawer. My yen to volunteer is colored by my insistence that Shane participate, and the sights and smells of a nursing home are too much for him. There is a food-bank across town in need of volunteers.

I am left with the knowledge that death, even when anticipated, is not easy; that there is a pattern, even in the final days.

And, no matter how hard we try…some things defy planning…

Older People

I try to avoid labels, all labels. But, I particularly dislike the label we apply to any human blessed with longevity. The term “Senior Citizen” is a misnomer on a number of levels. After all, an older person may not be “Senior” at all. He might be a junior. And what is the significance of “Citizen” here? Aren’t we all citizens? We don’t call babies “Newborn Citizens”. We wouldn’t refer to a forty-year-old as a “Midlife Citizen”. The mere idea sounds awkward and ludicrous.

I have heard the argument that the term “Senior Citizen” was borne out of respect for a person’s advanced age, but I’m not buying it. I believe the term to be market driven, much like the terms “Soccer Mom”, “Gen-Xer”, and “Baby-boomer”. Unfortunately, as the media makes use of these catch-phrases, the terms become part of our collective consciousness, morphing images born as marketing tools into stereotypes with inherently negative connotations.

I don’t like the word “elderly”, either. As soon as it reaches my ear, it becomes another word entirely, registering in my brain as “feeble”. Left with few options, due to my own semantic prejudices, I refer to those “of a certain age” as “older”.

I enjoy older people. I always have. As a young child, one of my best friends was our next-door neighbor, Earl Witcher. I wish I had a dollar for every time my parents told the story of my running, with arms out-stretched, from our driveway to his, shouting “Ale! Ale!”.

As a young mother, I was blessed to live next door to Ruby Kitchens, a hard-scrabble, deeply southern woman of indeterminate age, though her tight, pewter-colored perm suggested at least sixty. Ruby loved babies, which was lucky as I proved to be a prolific bearer. She loved to hold them, sing to them, and make faces at them. And, I enjoyed a rare empty lap as I watched her love them. For eight years we shared a driveway, and our markedly divergent lives, becoming dear friends. When the walls began to close in on my burgeoning family, visits were less frequent, but no less enjoyable. The children she helped me to raise are adults now, and Ruby has been gone for many years, yet I still think of her several times a week.

~~~

Joy is a spritely eighty-five, though if you ask her, she isn’t a day over eighty-three. Lucie turned eighty this year, passing the day in the hospital bed she has occupied since she was seventy-eight.

Joy came to work in our office three years ago, and within weeks had become one of my favorite things about weekdays. Last February, Lucie was the first hospice patient assigned to my care. I fell in love on sight.

Joy runs circles around most of the much younger employees in our office, coaxing productivity out of office equipment most of us have never learned to use, and doing it with a smile. Lucie is paralyzed, from the neck down, as the result of a stroke. She lays, a helpless, horribly contracted heap, in the center of her twin-sized world. She is completely dependent on others to meet her needs, and she doesn’t mind telling you what they are. I rarely visit without a small container of vanilla ice-cream.

Joy hums. You don’t so much look for Joy, as listen for her. The one time Joy isn’t humming is when she is talking, and she loves to talk. Her conversations usually surround some form of culture; she might recommend a book she’s just finished reading, or review a night at the symphony or an afternoon spent at the museum. An avid “Dancing with the Stars” fan, she loves to rehash the latest episode while stirring hot chocolate mix into a cup of steaming hot water.

Lucie’s eyes are usually closed when I enter her room. I’m careful to bend close before I say her name quietly, while softly touching one tiny, bony shoulder. Despite her efforts to open them, her right eye never fully cooperates, prompting my perch on the left side of her bed.

“Miss Lucie? It’s Stacye…” I encourage her to wakefulness.

“Hey!” She exudes enthusiasm in a voice barely above a whisper.

“It’s Saturday, Miss Lucie, February twenty-first, almost spring-time! How are you doing today?” I slide one hip up onto the bed, feeling the egg-crate mattress beneath its thin cotton covering.

“Oh…I’m alright…” She answers every time.

I stand, and move to draw the drapes.

“You want these open, don’t you Miss Lucie? Look at that gorgeous sunshine!”

I return to the side of her bed.

“Are you eating?” At last check she weighed less than seventy pounds.

“These people don’t cook right.” She answers with a lop-sided sneer and averted eyes.

“It’s not what you’re used to, is it?”

“It sure ain’t!” Images from an earlier visit, remnants of camouflage-colored puree decorating thick, institutional stoneware, fill my head.

White noise, from the television she insists must play at all times, accompanies our words. Sometimes I carry the conversation. Raised by a father whose green thumb was more of a necessity than a hobby, Lucie loves to hear about my garden.

And, when she’s up to it, Lucie has stories to tell. Hours, spent at her bedside, have taught me much about life in pre-integration Atlanta, as she takes me along on the bus ride across town to “care for a white family”. Most interesting, though, are her ruminations on Lucie; Lucie the daughter, Lucie the independent woman, Lucie the single mother. The injured cadence of her voice urges me closer, as she shares her disappointment in the father of her only child who “…left, and never came back”.

Two framed photographs provide the only break in the institutional green of our surroundings. Lucie’s grandson smiles through an eight-by-ten rectangle of glass. And, just underneath, hangs a six-by-four photo of his infant son, also known as “the baby”.

“Did your grandson bring the baby to see you this week?”, I ask as I dab at the unbidden tear falling from an eye that won’t quite open.

“Nah…”, she answers. “He’s busy…”

“Well, I bet he’ll be here next week!” I rise to leave, readjusting the blankets displaced by my hip.

Bending, I kiss her shiny, cocoa-colored forehead.

“I’m going now, Miss Lucie. I’ll see you next week…”

“Alright…”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Saturday Morning

The warm sun and gracious breezes of yesterday are gone. The morning dawns on rain; a reminder to be careful what you wish for….

I’ve sat here for too long, as per usual. So many distractions, so much ether-noise. I’m contemplating creating a net-free day; just one day, every week, during which the rolling chair in my office is allowed to grow cold. I’m warming to the idea.

I prefer lazy Saturdays. Yawning days upon which I can paint whatever vista my mind creates. Today is not one of those days. After struggling to bring some semblance of order to my domicile, I will pull on my warmest athletic clothing and accompany my son to his basketball game. We’ve had fun this year. We are winning, due in large part to my son’s ability. Success breeds fluidity.

A more expansive frame of mind encouraged me to contact a friend and arrange a dinner date for later this evening. As happens so frequently, now that the time is upon me, I consider offering my regrets. But I won’t. I’ll go. We’ll meet in the parking lot, and exchange the usual feminine greetings, or perhaps commiserate about the weather. Once inside, we’ll sit on opposite sides of a highly burnished wooden table and scan the crowd with full knowledge that we are miles from familiar faces. The menu will provide a private moment in which to compose our made-up faces while we flip through a mental tickler file of conversation topics until a particularly savory offering captures our attention, bringing us back to the task at hand. I’ll consider ordering something fatty and delicious, but I’ll give a cursory look at the column featuring soups and salads. I’ll make a choice to keep in my back pocket until time to order, when I’ll encourage her to choose first. My choice will be incumbent upon hers. After all, if her attempts at conversation are punctuated by forkfuls of vinegar-spiked, leafy greens, a beefy morsel won’t rest easily upon my palate.

I was reminded, this week, of the psychological benefits of good works. Today, I am returning to the nursing home. The hospice is housing four patients there. I will visit those I can find. Ms. Lucie is still there. I am looking forward to seeing her. I wonder if she will remember me. Of course, she rarely knew me when she saw me every week, so the question seems a little ridiculous. One the other hand, it really doesn’t matter. It doesn’t seem important to her that she know who you are, it is only important that you are, and that you are there. I never left her without a smile. I’m looking forward to wearing one today.