The Wads of Winter

My friend Connie raises Geese in Missouri. That’s not what she intended to do with her life. She was an award winning landscape designer in Chicago - but her mother was dying alone on the family farm and her city slicker siblings would not step up.

I’m not saying Connie’s mother “was” dying because she died, but because somewhere along the line she started holding her own.

Her brother grudgingly writes checks to make the problem go away as her sister sits back and criticizes.

It’s the traditional American family.

Hospice still comes out – that’s a surprise. Connie can’t get it through her head that they are there for end of life. When death is not imminent, they go away. When hospice saw my Gram was getting better that’s what they did. I joke that they fired her after four months. She lived years past that.

But Connie needs help, she can’t even accept the thought that they might stop coming. She hates and needs them. She rages on Facebook, she doesn’t want to hear the truth about hospice nurses being there to dispense comfort, not healing. I throw my two cents in like a grenade and run for fear of fallout.

It’s not good, it’s not bad – it just is.

I don’t want to get into it with her. Nobody carries a burden as heavy as hers. Her mom has lung cancer and mild dementia and Connie is in her second winter of horrific bronchitis and migraines. She and her mother live in separate buildings on the land and she has to trudge through deep snow to keep her mother fed and medicated and make sure the furnace is working. Not to mention feeding/watering/caring for the geese and the herding dogs and ….

I would break under her burden.

Today she wrote me privately. I have to take a deep breath to open her emails because they break my heart. She explained it this way. I’m not changing one word – just the punctuation because – well, I’m a Virgo.

She wrote “Not to put pressure on you, but I just can’t deal with people right now. And I don’t consider you a person. If you know what I mean- that is a compliment. You are more like a dog.”

The compliment was significant; we both like dogs better than people.

She wrote a very long email and it seemed wads were the crux of it – the straws that broke the camel’s back.

She said she was losing it due to her mother “stuffing endless amounts of kleenex up her sleeves and then my washing her clothes only to have millions of shreds of tissue all over everything, that then falls off when I take the clothes out of the dryer and then I have to sweep the floor.....her home aid brought red washclothes for some unknown reason--- she has millions here already- and so when I washed her clothes all of her whites came out stained pink. I blew up.”

The pink thing made me snicker a little.

But the tissue up the sleeves … that brought Gram back. She did that. She wadded some of it up and stuck it in her ears too; only in the winter.

Back when she was just a dumb blonde – before the dementia started to take her away. Her ears would be full of it and you’d say something and she’d get pissy – annoyed – like “speak the hell up!” Only she would never say “hell”.
I’d point to her ears and she’d double over with laughter. She’d pull them out and I’d say “there for a second I thought you were deef!” That was one of her words.

I think she had a theory that the wads kept her ears warm. Well, maybe the cochlea. I don’t recall ever having cold cochlea. I guess it could happen.

Hats messed up her hair and made her look like “the wreck of the Hesperus” – whatever that was. She was very vain.

We were exposed to the elements more than most because we were Jehovah’s Witnesses. Gram brought out the big guns on Saturday mornings when we went door to door with the Watchtower and Awake. She used COTTON BALLS instead of tissue wads. Maybe they were her “dress” wads.

And she wore an oppressively heavy brown mouton coat with tissues tucked up the sleeves. I’m sure she felt quite elegant, but I hated that coat. One Saturday morning, she caught a heel in the hem and I turned to see her rolling around on the sidewalk struggling to break free. The thickness broke her fall, but it looked like she was being mauled by a bear.

We laughed so hard we cried.

Years passed. I grew up and got married … a few times. She got older and dementia eased in slowly. She got a little testy with people. She bought me dog grooming mits for my third wedding. I’ll never know for sure - dementia or one last lucid shot at my credibility?

Then she forgot who we were; but it seemed like she remembered she loved us. I missed her before she was gone.

Yeah, I remember wads.
Connie ended her tirade …

“I have to get my head back on to seeding the fields and paying my debts off and dealing with hospital bills and sewing curtains, getting to meetings and pretending my life isnt freaking me out of my mind.... NOT lose it over pink clothes. And tissue bits. And hypocrites. And loneliness.”

I wrote back that the days are already getting longer – spring is coming. The snow will melt, the new chicks will arrive and the cycle will begin again.

I did not write that she will get well - her mother won’t and one day she’ll miss the wads and the day the laundry went pink.

End of Life

I signed on as a hospice volunteer a year ago. I told them "let me help these people write their memoirs."

So a year later I finally get the call. She is a lovely woman, very Catholic. I'll call her Carol.

People expect hospice volunteer work to be depressing. This experience was what I expected - very much the opposite.

I knew in my heart all such visits would be completely about the individual and not about me. I felt it was a time to be silent and just listen.

But Carol sensed that I had lost someone I loved - she thought maybe my son. She could tell it was someone very close. I told her last May I lost my Gram who raised me. I told her that since she left she has rattled paintings, shaken my bed and visited me in my dreams.

I laughed and told her Gram hasn't changed a bit. Carol seemed surprised and comforted.

She told me she didn't have much time left and I told her she was at the holiest time of her life. It was a wonderful visit, but she was very frail. I expected to be able to be there an hour, but she weakened significantly after only 45 minutes.

Sunday is our day. Last Sunday I called her aide to make sure she'd be up to it. She said Carol was looking forward to the visit VERY MUCH! She would be disappointed if I couldn't make it. I assured her I would. I packed up my laptop and headed out.

When I got there Carol was indisposed. The aide was busy with her. Her son and husband were upset ... I waited 30 minutes, but the situation didn't improve. The son apologized profusely. Which was so unnecessary.

Carol is an elegant woman in her 80s - still very beautiful and mentally sharp. It pained me that she has to go through this. In my head, death is painful, like birth. (If it is painful for the mother, how can it not be painful for the infant?)

It is painful as we enter a new plane of existence.

Her son said he was sorry I had "come for nothing." I didn't feel that way.

Today I called and the aide and son picked up at the same time. It sounded like the son wanted me there, but Carol had told her aide she wasn't up to company.

Once the son hung up, the aide told me "Carol is seeing her mother clear as a bell. She says she's very beautiful. She's seeing other relatives who have passed as well and is afraid she's going crazy."

The aide told me Carol is still very much aware of what's happening in this life - knows names, knows her son and his wife just had a child.

I said "good, they're all with her. All that remains is for those who love her to tell her it's OK to go." I imagine she has mixed feelings about leaving a new grandchild.

The aide told me she had just had her own "dream visit" from a friend the night before. She said she puts her nose to Carol's nose and tells her everything will be alright.

I said "You will be the perfect angel." I gave her my number in case they want me to stop by. I don't know if Carol has any "peaks" left.

I'm a little sad I haven't had time to tell her about an experience I had that would give her great comfort.

About ten years ago I saw in the newspaper where Janet, mother of my dearest childhood friend, had died. We had all been out of touch for decades. I told my Gram we should go. The funeral was to take place at St. Leonard's at the end of my Gram's street; the street I grew up on.

The church was darkened and quiet. As we walked down the aisle to Janet's coffin, my friend's brother remembered me and enthusiastically called me by name. "Little Stevie Spurgeon" towered above me. He remembered my Gram as well. "Hello Ethel!!"

He walked us up to the coffin and said "she's in a better place."

A lifelong smoker, she had died of lung cancer.

My Gram said "what do you mean 'better place' - SHE'S DEAD!" I was mortified, but I knew she was in great fear of death. It's amazing how many people who have been religious all their lives are fearful towards the end. There is such a huge difference between being religious and being spiritual.

There were about 30 mourners at the funeral. As I said, lights were dim ... I kept having a problem with my eyes (this never happens) ... I kept seeing rainbows around all the lights and candles. I remember blinking hard to make it go away - but it didn't. This went on for some time.

After the service, my childhood girlfriend told me her father had died a few years earlier. He was deeply spiritual and had trained for the priesthood before meeting Janet. They would go on to have five children.

My friend told me he was so spiritual he saw "death" as "his next big adventure." He promised when he got to the other side, he would send rainbows.

I can't think about it now without smiling.

Maybe I'll still get a chance to tell Carol about it; but - either way - I know she's in good hands on both sides.