by Kathy Brasby | Mar 13, 2015 | Seasons
Mildred’s eyes lit up when I approached her table at the dining room and I patted her hand.
“It’s so good to see you,” I said. Mildred had just transferred from an assisted-living facility to the nursing home. Now she wore an oxygen tube blowing air into her nose with a tank hooked to her wheelchair.
She gave me her familiar broad smile. “It’s good to see you, too. You’ll have to remind me of your name.”
I had lead a devotional class at her assisted-living home for several years and Mildred never missed.
“I look forward to this every week,” she’d told me more than once. She always made good comments, recalling stories from her youth and sermons from her pastor.
I hadn’t been to her facility in several months and she had re-entered my life at the nursing home where I visited.
“Remember me from the Cedars?” I asked. “I used to see you every week there.”
“Oh?” Her eyes searched my face and I could see her mind trying to make connections. “My memory isn’t as good as it used to be.”
But her smile was still good.
Whenever I see Mildred, I always touch her hand. “It’s so good to see you,” I tell her.
And she always responds, “It’s so good to see you, too. You’ll have to remind me of your name.”
And I always do.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Kathy Brasby | Mar 10, 2015 | Stories
When our hobby farm was at full capacity, we milked several Nubian goats every day. One morning, when I started chores in our milking room, my 4-year-old daughter climbed onto a large wooden feed box at the back of the room and peered behind it.
“Mom, there’s a cat back there.”
Oh, great. There weren’t supposed to be any cats in that room. “Is it dead or alive?”
She studied the gap between the box and the wall. “Dead. Can I pick it up?”
“No!” Yeuck. What now? Why did my sweet husband go to work 40 miles away when it would have been nice to turn that dead cat over to him? I was home alone. Well, me and a curious preschooler.
“Leave it alone,” I added before she got any new ideas for exploration. She huffed and crossed her arms but stayed atop the box with her feet dangling on my side.
I drew in a long breath, avoiding any images of this dead cat smashed against the wall.
I had to deal with it on my own. Where there any empty feed bags around? How was I going to pick up this thing?
Maybe I milked a little slower that morning. Why did adults get to be the responsible ones?
Believing strongly in the principle that it’s better to face the horror than have it hanging over your head all day, I finished the barn chores and took a deep breath.
Hand sanitizer. Check. Thick trash bags. Check. Facemask. Check.
Back into the milking room I marched, my daughter close on my heels. She wouldn’t miss this for the world. Sigh.
I leaned slowly over the feed box and looked down the gap. There, tattered and soiled, lay a purple and white stuffed cat toy.
“You said it was dead,” I said to my daughter.
“Well, it’s not alive.”
A lesson on the nuances of words. Check.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Kathy Brasby | Mar 3, 2015 | Stories
The hen had left the nest in the morning, leading her weaving thread of chicks behind her as she investigated the landscape that she hadn’t seen in a month.
Setting on a nest of eggs takes commitment and the willingness to stare at a wall for a month. The hen was ready to stretch her legs a bit.
When we happened onto the nest in our barn, eggs had been left behind.
“Why didn’t these hatch?” the four-year-old asked.
“Not all the eggs hatch. It’s just the way it is,” I said. Meaning, I didn’t know what had happened and didn’t really care.
But I might not have cared about these left-behind eggs but our son did. He leaned over the nest, with the lonesome trio of eggs.
“I hear something.”
“What?”
It does no good for your self-esteem to realize the 8-year-old can hear what you can’t anymore. Maybe those rock bands hadn’t been so good after all…
He bent over the nest. “I hear pecking.” He studied the eggs. “There.” He lifted an egg and pointed to a hole at one end. “I hear pecking in there.”
How to explain to a child that there’s no hope? I did it badly. “The hen left already. These aren’t going to hatch.”
He held the egg close to eye. If there was pecking going on, he ran the risk of taking a beak in his iris. “I see something.”
So he convinced me. We took the egg into the house and laid it on newspapers on the floor. I’m not sure why we did either thing, but he and his younger sister studied the motionless egg. Until it moved.
Yeah, it moved.
“I’m going to help it,” he said. He began breaking bits of the eggshell. “See? It’s moving?”
Conventional wisdom said to let the chick get itself out of there but I was beyond all that. Let the kids figure this out on their own.
The chick made it. Out of the shell and into life. Its mother had moved on with a whole stream of fuzzy babies. Our son decided to raise this one.
And he did until four months later when it pecked him on the cheek and he banished it to the barn with the other chickens.
What a journey for a persistent little chick and its persistent rescuer.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Kathy Brasby | Feb 27, 2015 | Seasons
The song leader stilled her guitar and studied the group scattered throughout the dining hall tables. Some of her crowd had fallen asleep and some were staring out the window but several were watching her intently, waiting for the next song.
“What birthdays do we have this week?”
There was a quiet as the gray-haired residents glanced around them.
“Nobody?” she asked.
Then one women brightened. “It’s my daughter’s birthday today.”
“Oh!” The song leader knew this woman and her daughter. “How old is Peggy anyway? Is she the same age as my son?”
“She turns 60 today,” Clara said.
The group, at least those who hadn’t fallen asleep or lost focus, nodded. Surrounded by several elderly people in wheelchairs and more who shuffled along with the aid of a walker, Clara finished her comment with a roll of her eyes.
“And she’s crying about it.”
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Kathy Brasby | Feb 20, 2015 | Seasons
Elinore pushed her walker to the table and slowly settled into one of the chairs. “So, are we playing cards or dominos?”
Then she turned her attention to me. “Are you going to join us?”
“I’ll watch.”
Elinore nodded and picked up the cards. “I’ve been here for over a year now.”
Here was the long-term care facility where we sat and I was a visitor dragging my feet to walk through the doors.
“I put myself in,” Elinore said. “I had fallen again, in my apartment, and came in for a couple of months. For therapy. Then I went back to my apartment and I fell again. That was enough for me. I decided I’d rather live here.”
Rather? I leaned forward. “So you left your own apartment?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, sliding the deck of cards against the card shuffler so she could pick them up. “I just couldn’t be falling all the time. They cook for me here. And they have a lot of things going on.”
I wasn’t sure I approved.
“Don!” She pointed the top of her head at an elderly man shuffling past the table. “Don, you should join us. You like cards, don’t you?”
Don ignored her but Elinore didn’t stop. “Oh, come on, Don. This would be good for you.”
He stopped, raised his eyes to meet hers, and then grunted. “Ok.”
“So, Don, did your daughter come today?” Elinore said.
Don shook his head.
“Well, that’s a shame. But you can have some fun with us.” She dropped the cards in the shuffler and pushed the button. “I can’t shuffle anymore.”
Shortly, she had invited Clara and Martha to join her, too.
They were still playing cards an hour later when I left. As I stood, the four wished me a good evening.
These residents found a way to care for one another and Elinore led the way.
Like this:
Like Loading...
