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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by Kathy Brasby | Jan 24, 2014 | Seasons
I was the obvious choice to drive my mother to her surgery. We had to leave for the hospital by 5:30 am and my father couldn’t, at that point in his life, be ready so early in the morning.
He came later with my brother, as did the rest of the family.
So Mom and I had an hour’s drive in the dark as I wondered if I’d be the last person to see her alive. The surgery was serious.
Doctors would open an incision from her throat to her stomach, break ribs and peel back everything to insert a new valve in her 81-year-old heart.
I don’t recall what we talked about. You’d think it would have been deep and meaningful, but it had more to do with who was coming and when they’d arrive. Details that would mean nothing to her whether she survived the surgery or not.
We walked through the brightly-lit hospital lobby to the admissions desk with the air pressing on me like a smoky fog. I couldn’t breath deeply and I wondered how my mother could take another step.
But she settled at the desk and calmly answered all the questions.
My throat was stuffed with cotton.
We were escorted to the pre-surgery area where she traded her street clothes for a surgical gown. I got the bag of clothes.
Souvenirs, I guessed, just in case.
Then the surgeon came to me and asked if I had questions. I’m not usually emotional but tears rolled down my cheeks as I tried to talk to him. He ignored the tears.
“I’m not worried about the surgery,” he said. “We’ll get her through that. It’s the next three days that are of concern. She’ll need to be a fighter.”
“She’s a fighter,” I said. Tears kept running.
A surgical liaison connected then. “I’ll give you updates every half hour or so. You’ll know how the surgery is going.”
Tears flowed.
The anesthesiologist called me back in to Mom’s cubicle. “She’s had a mild sedative and she can talk to you but she won’t remember any of this.”
But I would. I held Mom’s hand, kissed her cheek, assured her of my love for her. She patted my shoulder like a mother comforting a four-year-old.
And then she was whisked away.
I wasn’t long in the surgical waiting room before my sister arrived. We cried together. Every time the liaison came to report that the surgery was going very well, we cried.
“The doctor is pleased with her vitals,” the liaison said. We cried.
Both brothers arrived and they didn’t cry, which helped us a little.
After four hours, the surgeon met with the family to report everything had gone well and she was in recovery.
All good news on that day. And we cried again.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jan 17, 2014 | Seasons
Harry dialed his son. “The neighbors came over to scoop off the front walk.”
His son, Dean, lived across town and hadn’t made it out yet. “Oh, good. Thanks, Dad.”
“Just wanted you to know.” Harry hung up. Within minutes, Dean got another call. This one was from his sister.
“Dad says you didn’t scoop off the front walk.”
“Well, the neighbors did it. When did he call you?”
“Just now.”
Dean calculated. His father must have immediately dialed his sister after calling Dean. In fact, while Dean talked to Sharon, his phone buzzed with a new call. It was Harry.
“I better see what Dad needs now,” Harry told Sharon and switched the call to his father.
“Yeah, Dean, I wanted you to know that the neighbors also scraped off our windshield. But I don’t think we’re going to church anyway. It’s cold, you know. I just wanted you to know.”
Harry could no longer scoop snow or carry out his own trash but he could dial his phone. His children had given him a cell phone and it proved to be Harry’s new hobby.
He called all his children regularly and passed on news from one to another. Harvesting news and passing it on the the rest of the family became his daily goal.
Dean learned only to tell his Dad news that the whole family should hear but that was a small sacrifice in the long run.
Harry had a new purpose and it involved his favorite people: his family.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jan 11, 2014 | Seasons
I knew this when I started the conversation but Dad had lived on a farm his entire life. It wasn’t an easy talk.
Except for the years he’d spent overseas in World War II, Dad had been a farmer. His was a love affair with the land.
But in his later years, his weak legs and fading memory restricted him. Although he no longer was in charge of the fields, he had a few acres around his house that were being overrun with weeds. Fences needed repairs.
Dad couldn’t keep up anymore.
“Maybe we should talk about moving to a place that wouldn’t take any upkeep,” I suggested to him one day.
He bristled. “I’m not moving to town.”
“But it’s getting harder for you to keep up around here. We could find an easier place.”
He lifted his chin as a new idea pushed into his mind. “You kids can take care of this place.”
My brothers had both moved too far away to help, which meant Dad was referring to my husband and my sister’s husband.
“We don’t have time to keep up with our own places,” I said.
“Family should take care of family,” he said.
I wasn’t sure how to answer him. Both our husbands were hard-working guys submarined with their jobs. Adding the upkeep of Dad and Mom’s place wasn’t an option.
But then Dad brightened again. “I’ll just hire somebody to do it.”
This meant hiring one of the neighbors who had a big tractor-mower rig. “That’s a great idea,” I said. “Why don’t you call somebody and have them mow? Maybe once a month would keep those weeds under control.”
“I’m gonna do that.”
He never did. At his age, even making those arrangements was too difficult.
He did eventually move to town, which is another story for another time.
But I’m glad I let him take charge of the problem that day. Even when he didn’t follow through, at least he had the dignity of the choice.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jan 3, 2014 | Seasons
Opening the mail became a special event in my Dad’s later years. He would carefully slice open an envelope, study the plea, and write a check.
His heart was touched by the starving child in Somalia, by the disfigured little boy in Haiti, by the shoeless girl in an Ecuador jungle.
Every month he’d send back several $15 checks.
“Dad, why don’t you pick one charity and give it most of your donation budget?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “I like my way better.” And he connected with many charities that way.
But the backlash came after he passed. Not only did these organizations spend more than $15 a year to get more money from Dad, they sometimes sold their lists to others.
My parents had their mail delivered to their house and I was surprised their mailman didn’t lodge claims of back injury from hauling the daily pile of envelopes.
While my mom was able, she went through the mail, but after her stroke, I got the duty.
I’ve spent months now returning requests with a request: “Deceased. Please remove.”
Some have faded; some haven’t.
All that paper in the trash can sometimes saddens me. I wish Dad had picked his favorite and poured his heart into that one.
But I will admit this: the avalanche of envelopes is a hassle to go through, however, all those requests are a frequent reminder and a sweet monument to my Dad’s tender heart.
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by Kathy Brasby | Dec 27, 2013 | Seasons
Harry topped off his Thanksgiving feast with a project he looked forward to every year. The stack of VHS tapes beside his TV contained this year’s travels.
Harry had spent the summer with his wife hunting down trains and filming striking angles of trains thundering past him.
He selected campsites based on their closeness the train tracks and he had pulled himself out of bed before dawn to set up some of the shots.
Now it was time for the editing.
Harry pulled his legal pad in front of him and began taking notes. He played a tape, stopping to jot the location of cuts and edits.
Two weeks into the process, his wife checked in. “Do you have good footage this year?”
“Oh, yeah, this shot of the steam engine against the sunrise is stunning.” He leaned toward the television and flicked his remote control.
In three weeks, he had created a master tape containing trains churning across his screen in the mountains, on the plains, at dawn, at midnight.
“All right, Dear, you have to see this!” He pointed to the TV screen as the train images blasted across it. “This is the newest tape.”
Harry spent a week making a stack of copies of his master tape and distributed them to family and friends. He wrapped each VHS tape in layers of tissue paper and stuck a red bow on top.
Many got a train tape under their Christmas tree.
In January, Harry had a stroke.
Harry has now stowed his camera in a back closet and donated his camper. He shuffles from the recliner to the refrigerator, leaning on a walker.
But he’s doing OK. He has 20 years of train tapes to review and those images are new every morning.
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