In the small country town we are staying in as we wait for news of both homes closing … the one we are selling in Tucson (closing date approx 8/7), and the Harpers Ferry home (closing date approx 8/18), we wait and discover the unfamiliar relaxation that comes at the end of all this geographic change. There’s nothing to do. The frantic calls to realtors and lenders at both ends have leveled off. And then today, there was one more little trickle of activity.
Our Tucson realtor Patti called about a perfunctory appraisal form that had to be FAXed back to the lender. She needed a FAX number to send it to in WV and to have me send it back. Paul and I were in the center of town walking Daisy when Patti’s call came. I thought about the library but had already had a run-in with the librarian there when I had popped my head in to ask if vacationers could borrow DVDs and was told “No” with a tone that made me feel both annoyed and stupid for even entertaining such a thought. Even though as a former librarian, I know how much abuse of the word “borrow” goes on, I thought she was a bitch and told Paul how unpleasant she was.
You can imagine how reluctant I was to return and inquire about sending FAXs, but when I had asked another retailer where to send a FAX, the library was it.
I went in and told her my need and she gave me the rate for a max of 10 pages plus any long distance charges. I called my realtor to ask her a few questions and then the librarian literally threw me out for using a cell phone in her (empty) library. I was miffed and told Paul that this woman was impossible and if I had to deal with her ever again, he needed to go in my place and turn on the French charm.
Patti had said she would mail the form but as it happened she called me back and said no, she had to FAX it. The last thing I wanted to do was return to the library and incur the wrath of this woman, but I did.
I went back. I asked the librarian if she would please send my FAX and she said she would and I stood there in neutral annoyance until she asked me to sit down and I pulled a chair up to a desk in the aisle and waited. A patron came in and asked the librarian, whose name was Carolyn, how her summer was going. “Not good”, she said, and I was quietly gloating thinking “Right. What a bitch. She can’t even enjoy this gorgeous town in the ripeness of a late July day when everything about being alive is so exaggerated and wonderful”.
The return FAX came in and I had to sign it and have Paul sign it too except that he had taken Daisy back to the rental and I was signing for him which if you were a small town librarian might be considered a crime and I did it fast and gave it to her and she sent it and didn’t look…as far as I could see.
Then I gave her four dollars. There was an awkward pause and I had noticed early on that her arm was wrapped in an ace bandage so I asked, “Did you fracture your arm?”. She answered, “No. It’s lymphedema.”
Now a light goes on and everything starts to reprogram so quickly and with such discomfort that I feel the process of my brain making its corrections.
“You’ve had surgery?”, I asked, knowing full well that she had had breast cancer and that the removal of lymph nodes was causing her present distress.
“Yes”, she said and recounted the chapter and verse of her cancer nightmare ending with the discovery yesterday that she has metastasis to her bones. “It’s the 'inverse T’, she said, “spine and pelvis both”. She went on to tell me about the pain and how her MD has told her it’s just a side effect of the chemo but she knows it’s the bone mets. I believe she is right. I told her what I knew about managing the pain from bone cancer, the need to add steroids, the long-acting and breakthrough meds. I did not use the “H” word and neither did she, but when she talked about having only Medicare and no money, I wanted to tell her about the Medicare Hospice benefit that is there for her when the time comes.
I will communicate with her again before I leave this idyllic town. I am thinking about how to do that. Meanwhile, I have learned a profound lesson about being small and judgmental that I am more than happy to share while it is still fresh.
A long time ago, when the girls were hurt, a friend of mine named Father Ed Abbott told me that “Sometimes we find God and sometimes He finds us”. Today he found me.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Moving
The day arrived much too soon and there they were, four movers at the front door. The chief mover was a strong, compact Israeli who walked back and forth in front of all the boxes shaking his head. I approached him to ask about the piano and whether it would be placed on the truck before everything else. “We’re not talking about the piano, Lady”, he said. “You got too many boxes”. Paul had packed a bazillion boxes six months earlier. I had no idea what was in them and have just recently learned that a significant percentage contained stuff the girls had saved since kindergarten (Liza saved things from even earlier… I think she snuck souvenirs out of the maternity hospital). One box contained cactus clippings. Several had remnants of old frames and chairs. I had estimated 60 boxes and there were over 100 in the garage alone.
“That’s fine,” I told the man. “We’ll pay the difference”. But he was not content with that. “Your estimate is based on 60 boxes. You got too many.” We went back and forth for a while on this and it became quite heated until he understood that his company was released from the “binding” quote. The process moved forward.
Four hours later, the movers were almost done and the men from 1-800-GOTJUNK? showed up and started carrying out stuff to the left … loads of cardboard, broken plastic and old blinds, while the movers continued loading the rest of our precious belongings from the right. Neil and Paul were still wrapping mirrors and paintings at the end and somehow it all got done with the JUNK people sweeping the garage clean as they departed.
It was very quiet in the house. We said goodbye to it as we have five homes before and went to Diana and Neil’s for the night. They took us to a restaurant where Paul nearly dropped his head onto his plate of ribs, he was so tired.
The next day, refreshed and excited, we rode with Neil to Phoenix where we had the pleasant surprise of an upgrade to 1st class for our trip to BWI. This was Daisy’s first airplane ride. She was in a little carrier and had been sedated about halfway to Phoenix, per the vet’s recommendation. Once on board, she was placed under the seat and she started growling through her medicated state and scratching incessantly at her carrier to get out. Some of the passengers who had actually paid for 1st began looking around for the source of the noise. Paul was asleep already and Diana and I started whispering and signing so the dog would settle down which she eventually did.
Late that night we arrived in Baltimore and began a mini-vacation with Diana, driving down to the Chesapeake to a VRBO rental that turned out to be very peaceful and relaxing. It was over those next few days that we settled back into the rhythm of the East and the pattern of summer days we had almost forgotten. We rose very early and sat out on the porch where the music of birds was like a reception party given by old and dear friends. Daisy was enthralled. She stood on her hind legs at one point and followed a bumblebee across the yard; all she knew in Tucson were geckos and an occasional tortoise. She also learned how to pee on the grass and followed the scents of other dogs who had visited before her.
On Thursday we drove to my sister Patricia’s in northern VA and prepared to say goodbye to Diana the following day. The evening was filled with laughter as Pat and Paul, the two crazy Geminis, bounced off each other’s humor and we enjoyed Lloyd’s fabulous cooking. My sister Doreen helped to make us feel at home and we stayed up lots later than we did in Tucson days.
On Friday we brought Diana to Dulles and bid her adieu for a while. I am plotting to get her out again within a few months and hopefully for good when she finishes her latest degree at the end of 2010.
Since she left, we have had all our energies focused on our home-to-be in Harpers Ferry. Here is what it looks like.
Later…
Sunday, July 5, 2009
THE LAST DEATH
Friday marked the end of my hospice career. At 1:00 PM, I was sent to evaluate a 92 year old woman in a nursing home. It was one of the least pleasant nursing homes in town and I always take one last sweet breath of fresh air as I open the front door. I did so on Friday and made my way through the long halls to find the patient in 46C. As I passed the med nurse in the hallway I told her who I was and she said, “I think Mrs. N. is close”. Now we in hospice say “active”, not close, meaning actively dying. I always find this an interesting word in that most of us think of death as a process of letting go and not as “work”. The reality is that it often appears to be work, to be a job to leave this world. When I walked into room 46 I saw Mrs N. in the corner and her breathing was very labored. I called her name and she didn’t respond. As I waited by her bed she opened her eyes and fixed them on the space near the window. She cried out softly and closed her eyes again. She was not aware of me.
I knew that if we admitted her to hospice, she would have one of our nurses come out, get meds that would make her more comfortable and provide great support for her family. I got to work. I called her daughter who lived out of town and explained what was happening. The daughter said she doubted that her mother was really dying because “she looked fine on Sunday when I was up there”. She agreed, though, to sign faxed consents so I started preparing five forms for her signature. When they were ready I inquired about the location of the fax machine. A very large nurse with keys opened the med closet, showed me the fax machine and began to leave. I asked a few questions about dialing 9 or 1 etc. and she answered me abruptly and left. I then started faxing and broke the machine. It wasn’t exactly broken but the little square screen had the message “open cover” and when I did, I found nothing wrong. I closed it but the message persisted. This went on for several minutes. All I could think of was that this lady was going to die before she could be officially on hospice. There was something wrong with that. It was almost as if the fax machine would be responsible for her death. No, worse, it was as if I WOULD BE RESPONSIBLE because I was too incompetent to operate this little machine. At that moment, the large nurse with the keys returned to the closet, asked how I was doing and then said VERY smugly, “We never have a problem with the fax.” In a few minutes the consents were faxed, signed and returned and I was able to admit Mrs. N. and then left to do my charting.
I won’t ever know if she died that hour or that day because I turned in my computer and my pager and left my job at 4:00 PM. I thought my last day was kind of absurd and then thought about death itself being pretty absurd. You spend a lifetime growing, learning, trying and failing and then trying and getting it right. You develop wisdom and appreciation for simple things like birds and the feel of a cool breeze on your cheek. You refine your love for everyone in your life and start loving them just as much if not more for their quirks and bad habits as for all their so-called virtues. You learn to laugh at all of it. And then it’s time to go. And sometimes it’s your fate to die alone in 46C with a little light sheet over you and somebody down the hall trying to send a fax to your family to buy you a little more comfort. God bless you, Mrs. N. God bless us all.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Almost Heaven
Liza and I drove to Harper’s Ferry from her DC apartment on Sunday – up Connecticut Ave, through Chevy Chase, jumping on the interstate to Frederick, MD and then hanging a left on 340 for the last 28 miles. We crossed the Potomac River into Virginia, met Dorothy our realtor and set off to discover this little corner of history and extraordinary beauty. Harper’s Ferry dates from 1799 and is at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers. It is the site of John Brown’s raid in 1859 that served as the prelude to the Civil War. (Ironically, on our home tour we saw some confederate flags and one large one had a wolf’s head at its center. Fortunately it’s a wolf that goes hungry in our time).
We rode up the mountain side seeing all kinds of lovely homes with 2-3 acres of land and yards that backed into the Appalachian forest. What’s not to like? It’s a quick ride down the mountain and across the street to the train station with both the MARC and Amtrak running on cue. Two homes were really appealing and are priced a lot lower than MD or VA, with lower taxes as well. Downside? I will no longer stop at Safeway or Trader Joe’s on a daily basis. Nobody can “drop in” for less than a weekend. Work will be an hour away by train. The positives: great living and breathing space; proximity to DC when we feel like it; lots of flowers and wildlife; and QUIET.
On July 10, we will head out and make our way to that little niche on two mighty rivers. Let’s see what happens next…
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