by Kathy Brasby | Feb 14, 2014 | 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.
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 my mother now resided.
“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. None came. “My memory isn’t as good as it used to be.”
But her smile was still there. Her love of people was still there.
I was sorry to lose those years we’d had together, although glad to re-connect.
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.
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by Kathy Brasby | Feb 11, 2014 | Hope
I wasn’t this nervous during the birth of my first child or when I gave my first presentation in sophomore speech class.
The day I started my running program was not a day for public consumption.
I downloaded an app on my iPhone ( C25K Free) which promised to get me from a couch potato to a 5K run in 8 weeks. I selected my running playlist. I signed up for Strava, a GPS service that could track my runs by distance, trail, and time.
In short, I stalled.
But the day came. I had already decided on a secluded trail where nothing but hawks and crop dusters could watch me run.
Yeah, there was a crop duster that day. A small yellow airplane made at least three passes over me while I staggered through the training.
Fortunately, I had thought to wear a baseball cap and I just kept it tugged low.
Nobody could see my face.
The training app featured a sweet voice calmly cuing me: “Start walking now.”
I was good on the walking part. I strode out confidently for five minutes and then my sweet trainer said, “Start running now.”
I knew I only had to run for one minute on this day and so I stepped right out.
When waiting out a labor contraction or that last minute before the Friday bell releases you for the weekend, sixty seconds is an eternity.
And it’s even longer than that when you’re running and you’re out of shape.
I have never been so glad to hear my trainer speak again: “Start walking.”
I thanked her. Out loud. The hawk didn’t care.
App or no app, those were welcome words.
Ninety seconds go by fast when you’re trying to catch your breath and the trainer, with that voice that now sounded more like she didn’t care much, said, “Start running now.”
I survived. But then, just for the record, I survived labor and the sophomore speech, too. Amazing.
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by Kathy Brasby | Feb 7, 2014 | Seasons
When my mother was 80 years old, she climbed onto a 4-wheeler and drove it down the lane and back.
She spent most mornings from April to September in her yard, pulling weeds. May was for planting and October for raking the limp leaves.
Although my father had made all the auto purchases in the family, she took that on in her 80s and selected the car she wanted.
She’d call a family member in the afternoon. “I need you to come over here for supper and help me get all this food eaten.” And they’d come because she’d prepare a nice spread for a meal, often including a pie.
One day at breakfast, the kids and I decided it would be a good day to visit the zoo. “Let’s invite Grandma,” one of them said.
“Uh, we need to leave in a hour,” I said. I didn’t think that even my mother, who adjusted to almost anything, could pull that off.
She did. “Sure, I think that’ll be fun.”
Mom walked all over the zoo that day and helped me tend to energetic kids. Wonder where they got that kind of energy?
@copyright Kathy Brasby
So when we decided to make a trip into the Colorado Rockies to view the fall aspen colors, of course Mom came along.
Although she slept all the way up on the two-hour trip and slept most of the way, home, too.
Two weeks later, we found her on the floor beside her bed with a useless left arm and leg. A stroke.
Her life changed in a moment.
She still has the same spunk, the same drive to go. But she has to go in a wheelchair now.
It’s a cliche but life is precious. I’m glad Mom had those adventures and did all she did. The memories keep us all going as we walk through another season in Mom’s life.
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by Kathy Brasby | Feb 4, 2014 | Hope
Our youngest daughter was a quiet baby until she gained mobility. Crawling opened up her world. It wasn’t long before neither trees or walls were an obstacle. Energy oozed from this child.
So it made sense to me, when she was 4, to enroll her in ski school for the day while the rest of the family hit the slopes.
Ski school for pre-schoolers included lunch, games, and a lesson on the beginner slope. I knew she’d love the action.
When I picked her up at the end of the day, I discovered that she hadn’t gotten a lesson.
After lunch, the staff helped the kids get ready for the teaching session but our daughter announced that she’d rather not go out. So they let her stay inside with the movies and cookies.
We spent $150 on this experience.
On day two, I decided to take her to the beginner’s slope myself. As I zipped her snowsuit and buckled her boots, she calmly told me that she’d rather not go out. She had to words down exactly.
While visions of Bambi and Cinderella probably danced in her head, they didn’t in mine.
“You’re going,” I said. “You’ll like this.”
With a sigh, having lost the chance at chocolate chip cookies too, she tromped beside me to the slope.
The slope was nearly flat. I also had a gadget that wrapped around her middle while I skied behind her. I could keep her from zooming away and even from falling.
So away we went.
Within an hour, she could stop on command. Within two hours, she was begging me to take off the gadget because I was slowing her.
When the lifts began to close, she crossed her arms. “I don’t want to go in yet.”
“Really?”
“Yeah! This is fun!”
I knew the ski school staff couldn’t push my daughter out in the cold. But I could.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jan 31, 2014 | 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 nursing home where we sat. I was a visitor with a chip on my shoulder. Nursing homes were necessary evil – no more.
“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.”
To choose between cards or dominos? 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 chatting and playing cards an hour later when I left. As I stood, the four wished me a good evening.
Maybe nursing homes were evil. Maybe not. But these residents found a way to care for one another and Elinore led the way.
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