Speaking of Mr M

from August 14

Which we weren’t, but here’s an update nonetheless.

Mr. M’s volunteer returned from her vacation, and I stopped visiting. Nothing against Mr M, I thought he was adorable, but I needed some time to take care of some business things, and I was running myself ragged. That, and his volunteer came back from vacation. Otherwise I would have kept going, of course.

A couple of weeks passed by, as weeks will, time which included the Great Northwest Heat Wave of 2009, a time which burnt out a few of my brain cells and left me, afterwards, stumbling about in a parody of myself as I tried to remember what I’d been doing before my only mission in life became survival.

And I thought of Mr M, and wondered how he was doing.

The other night charming husband and I drove up to a Starbucks with the intention of grabbing some sort of drink (for him) on our way home. And there out in front of Starbucks was, not Mr M, but the hospice chaplain.

“Charlean!” I squealed, in a paroxysm of joy. I like Charlean.

And Charlean had news for me. Mr M’s sisters had flown out from Boston to see him. In person! After years of being estranged from his family, isolated, homeless and alone out here, his sisters flew to see him. And now they’re looking into finding a facility in Boston to move Mr M too, and our hospice is willing to send someone along to help him get there, he being in the condition he’s in. One of Mr M’s sisters is a nurse, which is also fabulously helpful of course.

Isn’t that great? I am so happy that his sisters have so willingly accepted him back. I don’t know what happened between them before, and now, it doesn’t seem to have mattered. Maybe he just drifted away, as people will sometimes do. His son seems to be a bigger issue, but hopefully that’ll work out too. I hope so. Life’s too short, isn’t it?

I Lost My Patient. Then I Found Him.

from July 17th

I went to see Mr M yesterday, a day so hot that I’d rather have been indoors and not in my car, especially since my car is currently lacking air conditioning. Hot is a relevant term, since some people are quite happy in the sort of weather that makes me wilt, but all the same, it was hot.

When I got there I noticed the smoking woman from the last visit was outside again, smoking. I went inside and headed for Mr. M’s room. His roommate was there, the smoking man with only one leg, sitting comfortably on his bed, but when I walked over to the other side of the room, behind the curtain, there was no Mr. M.

The roommate indicated he had no idea where he’d wandered off to, shaking his head as if to say, “How the hell would I know?” Not overly friendly, but the man’s missing his leg, so I give him a break.

I went out to the nurse’s station, which is right next to the room, and I ask the overly extended person if she knows Mr. M’s whereabouts.

“He’s in his room,” she says, certain that she knows his location.

“No, he’s not there.”

She comes out from behind her desk and goes into the room, as if I’m mistaken, I just didn’t look for him, obviously he’s there. It’s not as if he wanders around by himself all that often after all.

He’s not there.

“Maybe he’s in the restroom,” she says, and she goes to look. He’s not there.

“Maybe he’s in the shower,” she says, and she goes to look. He’s not there.

“I don’t know where he is,” she says, “but maybe he went out the back,” and someone else walking by confirms that he was last seen headed for the back door. “He goes out there sometimes to get a snack.”

Okay then. At least I have a destination now. I head down the hall, turn left, and go out the door marked, “Back Door.” I see a big sign saying, “No smoking except in the designated area.” It occurs to me that he went for a smoke, but since I have the cigarettes with me still that’s not exactly likely. There’s a fenced-patio, a couple of vending machines, another building with laundry facilities. There’s no Mr. M. I look around the corner, to a grassy area. No Mr. M. I walk along the path and find a smoking area, under some trees, a couple of inside chairs and a can for butts, and a picnic table. But no Mr. M.

I look in corners and in darkened areas, but no Mr. M.

I wonder if he’s run off. How far can a man in a wheelchair get?

I go back inside.

I look out front, thinking that perhaps he found his way out there, but he’s not there, just the smoking woman. I go back to his room, and someone asks if they can help me. “I’m just looking for Mr Marshall,” I say, and she tells me, “He’s in his room.”

“I don’t think so,” I tell her, and she goes to look. He’s not there.

“I think he’s out back,” she says, “You should go look there.”

Despite the fact I was just there and no one at all was out there, I go back. I mean, I’m here, what else am I going to do? So I go out back. He’s not there. This was not exactly a surprise to me.

Coming back in I see him, coming up the other end of the corridor, the one that runs along the front of the building.

“Where the hell have you been,” I greet him with.

No, I don’t. That would be rude. Instead, I ask him how he is, and he starts to tell me about his long journey, out the back, around the side, up to the front, down the corridor. It’s as if he’s in training for a triathlon.

I hand him the pack of cigarettes I got him the night before (my husband choosing to stay in the car as I shopped for cigarettes, something I’ve never bought for before, not wanting to enable him in helping a smoker smoke), and the lighter I thought would come in handy. It’s yellow. I got it because it was pretty.

“Where would you like to go now,” I ask, and he wants to go out front to enjoy his new cigarettes.

We go out front, and I park him in the shade, and I sit on the outdoor couch. I’m exhausted. I’ve been running around in the heat looking for a 61 year old man in a wheelchair, and he’s in better shape than I am. And Mr M talks.

I mean, he talks. And he talks. Two of his sisters have called. His sisters! They’ve called the facility! He tells me about his sisters, one’s an RN, another sister has a bit of a delicate of constitution and they haven’t told her about him yet, and his brother is a janitor in Boston at the federal building. His son, he tells me about his son, and how there were problems with that relationship because of a girl, but his sisters will talk to him. He tells me about his dad, who got sick and told no one and no one knew until he died. He tells me about being homeless in Portland, and how he’d sleep under Burnside, by the Portland Saturday Market, and how the cops would come wake everyone up in the middle of the night and tell them to move on. Vancouver is, he tells me, a much better place to be homeless. It was in Vancouver that he got picked up by the police, and it was then that he found out he had cancer that couldn’t be fixed.

He speaks quietly, so much so that when there are other people talking close by, smoking woman and smoking legless man, who has come out, I can barely hear him, and I miss some of the things he says, but it doesn’t really matter. He talks about how they want him to come back so they can look after him, and how he’s not sure if that would work, but his sister is an RN, so it might work. It’s all still theoretical, of course, and he knows that.

He smokes two cigarettes, taking a long break in between. It’s hot, even here in the shade, and eventually his voice winds down. I think he must be exhausted. I ask him if he’s ready to go in, and he says he is, he’s getting hot, but he’s not tired.

I wheel him inside. I’ve already opened the door twice, once for legless man and then for smoking woman. I’m getting quite good at this door opening thing. I wheel him back to his room, but he doesn’t want to get out of his wheelchair. He says it’s more comfortable than the blue chair they usually place him in. I park him next to his glass of water, and I ask if there’s anything he’d like when I come back on Friday.

He thinks for a moment. There’s so many things he hasn’t had in so long, after all.

“A couple of stamps,” he said, “I need to write some more letters.”

From July 13th

Last week I went to see Mr. M a total of three times. Wednesday I asked if he wanted to go outside, it being a cooler day. I’d given him his M&M’s, not just one bag, but four, in case one wasn’t enough. I’d started with five, but ate one before I got there. So shoot me. I’m a bad volunteer. As soon as I asked if he wanted to go outside he rose to his feet, and asked for his baseball cap on the other side of his bed. He got into his wheelchair, his hat on his head, and we went for a stroll.

 

We were looking for places to have a cigarette, but there’s not much to the grounds of this particular nursing home. An area right in front for residents to sit, in the shade, and a parking lot. We sped out into the parking lot, as much as two can speed when one’s in a wheelchair, and looked around the buildings, but the pavement was bumpy and we came to the conclusion that there was no place to hide.

 

This because no one had told us that it’s okay for residents to smoke right outside the front door, to the left, with a table and a comfy sort of couch for those of us not in chairs. We didn’t find that out on Wednesday. We roamed with abandon, and then we sat outside, enjoying the cooler weather and the flowers, and the green of the grass and the trees. We didn’t talk much. Mr M. seemed to like feeling the air.

 

Friday he wasn’t feeling very well (hence his inclusion in the hospice program) so I stayed just long enough to ask if he wanted me to come back on Monday, after handing him a couple of chocolate chip cookies I’d picked up from Subway. He nodded his head before sinking back down into his chair, nodding, then sinking, curled slightly to alleviate the pain.

 

Today I returned, and he was up in his chair. The weather today is muggy (which I always thought sounded like the weather was attempting to mug someone, but it seems to be a popular usage and, I think, a correct one), cloudy, with cool winds. I asked him if he wanted to go sit outside, and he stood, got right up, and then tried to reach across his bed for his hat.

 

“Whoa,” I said, “why don’t you sit down in the chair, and I’ll get your hat.”

 

I was afraid he was going to fall over onto his bed, and then where would we be?

 

We maneuvered out of the room, a trickier proposition now that Mr M has a roommate. We headed outside, and to the right of the front door, and I sat in a chair, and he sat in his wheelchair. I looked over to the left of the door, and there were two residents in wheelchairs. And they were smoking. They’d been there when I’d entered, but I hadn’t noticed that they both had cigarettes in their hands.

 

I told Mr. M, “Look, they have cigarettes!”

 

He looked over their way, more than a tinge of envy on his face. He has big brown eyes, and I can tell when he wants something.

 

“I’m going to go see if I can get a cigarette.” I walked over to the two and said, “Excuse me, but Mr M hasn’t had a cigarette in 8 months, and he’d really like one. Do you think I could get one for him? I’d be happy to buy you more.”

 

I’m not above groveling.

 

One, the woman, said, “I only have one left, but I can go in and get more,” and the other one, a man, said, “That’s okay, he can have one of mine.” He waved off my offer of compensating him.

 

The woman said, “He better come over here though, this is the smoking area.”

 

So I gave Mr M the cigarette and lit it for him with the lighter I’d also borrowed, then wheeled him over to the smoking area. I sat on the couch, since I was the only one who hadn’t brought my own chair.

 

And Mr M, who hardly talks to anyone because he has no one, talked to the other two residents. They talked about smoking. The woman said she would never quit, and she came to this nursing home because she could smoke outside. The man, who was missing half of one leg, said if he could quit for 8 months he’d never go back. Mr. M puffed, and said 8 months was the longest he’d been without a cigarette.

 

The woman said she thought there were cigarettes available for sale at the nursing home, a claim the man scoffed at, but said it might be possible. I thought one cigarette was fine for Mr M’s first day of smoking, but didn’t say so. Instead I let the moment slide away, after saying I’d look into it and find out.

 

The man left us, rolling out into the sun for a bit, then rolling back up. I got up and opened the door for him, this particular nursing home being bereft of things like automatic doors. There is, however, a doorbell that one can push if one wants assistance. I then held the door for two paramedics who were bringing in a woman on a stretcher. She looked rather lively, for someone in her condition, and said hello to me as she passed by.

 

I went back to my spot on the couch and said I’d developed a real talent for opening doors for people. The woman laughed and said it was a good skill to have, and Mr. M smiled.

 

The woman asked Mr M where he was from, and they talked about the weather, and train travel, and why Mr M came out here. He said it was his asthma. Mr M came out here from the east on a train. Halfway here, or in Nebraska, he got off the train and realized his asthma was already much better.

 

He was homeless for a year, he said, before he ended up in the nursing home. “It’s better to be homeless here,” he said, referring to Vancouver, “than it is in Portland.”

 

My own expert on where it’s best to be homeless, in case I should need to know.

 

The woman gave Mr M the last half of her last cigarette. “D’you want to finish this?” she asked him, and handed it to him, then to me said, “He was looking at it, I thought he needed it more than I did.” I liked her. He finished her cigarette, and, if I’m not mistaken, he rather enjoyed it.

 

The woman went in then, and I held the door for her, and then rang the doorbell so an attendant could wheel her back to her room.

 

I took Mr M in, and we wended our way back to his room, after stopping at the front desk to ask if there was any truth to the rumor that they had cigarettes available for sale. I did not receive a positive response to this question, but I told them it was no problem, I’d just get him some cigarettes myself, and they seemed relieved, as if this is not an uncommon request and they’re forever denying people the one thing they want most in the world.

 

The man who’d been outside, the man with one leg, was in the other bed now. This was Mr M’s roommate, but they don’t seem to communicate much. Mr M sat back in his chair, and I put his hat back on his bedside table. I sat down on his bed, the only place for me to sit. I don’t stand well. I tend to fall over. I asked if there was anything else he needed, other than cigarettes, which I’d bring him Wednesday, when I come back. He said no, and he lowered his head and whispered, “I wrote my sister two weeks ago.”

 

“Haven’t heard back from her yet, have you?” I asked.

 

He shook his head.

 

I wish I knew her name, her town, so I could call her, but that’s not my concern, is it? I’d like to tell her that her brother is dying, and that he’d like to hear from his family. I don’t know what their relationship is like, what he’d done, or what they’d done, or what happened, but because I am who I am, I want to fix it. I can’t fix it. I can’t even fix my own failed family relationships much less anyone else’s. Maybe I want to fix it because I can’t fix my own, as if fixing someone else’s will allay some of the feelings that still drift around me.

 

Instead, I take his hand, and I tell him I’ll be back the day after tomorrow, and we’ll go outside and have a cigarette. It’s not much, but it’s something.

Mr M. and M&M's

Last week I went to meet Mr M. I’m a substitute volunteer while his usual volunteer is on vacation. He was sitting in a blue chair next to his bed in the nursing home, a shy older black man who has no family locally, no friends. When I say older, I mean older than me of course, since otherwise it’s meaningless. The hospice chaplain introduced me as his sub volunteer, and I shook his hand and told him it was a pleasure to meet him.

She left us alone for a few minutes. He looked around, avoiding me. I asked if there was anything I could bring him, if there was anything he needed or wanted. He thought about it, shook his head slightly, and finally said, “Stamps. I could use some stamps.”

Probably a bit too enthusiastically I said, “Stamps! Okay, I’ll bring you a few stamps.” This is good, the asking for stamps. He’s decided to try writing to members of his family, his youngest sister, and seeing what happens. It was too hot to take him outside, and I told him that perhaps when I returned we could go for a walk. It’d be in a wheelchair, of course, so technically only one of us would be walking.

Today I went back. He was sitting in the same chair, watching a National Geographic show on television. I took his hand, and told him it was nice to see him again. I sat on the bed which was right next to him, perhaps it’s his bed, I’m not sure – there’s two in the room, and just him. I searched around in my purse and found the few stamps I’d brought from him.

“These were all I had today, but I can bring you more.” He said that was fine, since he only had three letters to send. At least I think that’s what he said.

Mr M is 61, and has terminal cancer. He lives at the nursing home, alone, and I call him Mr M_______ to accord him the respect I think he deserves but hasn’t received. He’s estranged from his family, and he tells me that he doesn’t think he can write to his son and tell him his condition, so he’s written to his younger sister, knowing that she’ll know how to tell his son. They’re all back east, there’s no one close by, even if they were close emotionally. I wonder how his sister will respond to his letter. I don’t know his family history, I don’t know how down and out he was before he ended up here, but I know it was pretty close to the bottom.

I don’t ask that. I ask him if it’s okay if we talk. I ask him how long he’s lived here, and I tell him how long I’ve lived here. I ask him if he likes dogs, and he tells me he had a puppy once, and the puppy, being rambunctious, ran out into the street. Since then, he hasn’t wanted another. I feel as if I’ve put my foot in my mouth, but I persevere. Me, who doesn’t talk to people.

He doesn’t want to go outside today, he doesn’t feel the best and would rather not. I tell him that’s fine, we can do whatever he wants.

The TV’s still on, and it’s a show about exploration, and Florida. I ask him if he’s ever been to Florida. He says no. He was north, in New York, where he was born, and he came west and found it helped his asthma. I tell him where I’ve lived.

I ask him about the food at the nursing home. “How’s the food here,” I ask, and he says, slowly and with much thought, “It’s okay, most of it. Some of it,” and he pauses to regroup, “is really good, some isn’t.”

His speech is slow, as if he’s not used to communicating by this rather obscure method, as if English is a second language, but he’s alert and clear, and able to have a conversation. I’m not sure if he wants to or not. He’s accommodating, that’s for sure. I won’t let him off too easily though.

I want to tell him that everything will be okay, that everything works out, but I can’t. For one thing, it’s not true. We watch TV for a bit, and he shifts in his chair.

“Is there anything you can’t get here that you’d like?” I ask. I’m determined to get something for him, since it’s all I can do.

“Well, I haven’t had a cigarette since November,” he says, looking at me, then away, then back, not sure where to look as he makes this confession. “I’ve stopped before, but never for this long.
Usually when I get sick I stop, then when I get better I start again. Two months is about the most I haven’t smoked.”

It’s his asthma that’s made him stop smoking every so often. Now it’s the nursing home, which has a bit more clout, apparently. I’ve already been warned that he’ll ask for cigarettes and really, we don’t care, and by “we,” I mean hospice, but the nursing home, that’s another matter. There’s no smoking in the nursing home, and if I were able to smuggle cigarettes in I’d have to smuggle Mr M outside to smoke them, because what if the other patients saw and wanted one too? Instead I tell him that I know it’s hard to not be able to smoke, especially since helping people not smoke is what my husband does for a living.

“I’m not sure I can get cigarettes past the desk,” I tell him, “so is there anything else?”

He thinks for a moment. He tries out a few things in his mind, almost to the tip of his tongue, I can see that he’s thinking of what he’d like, and I’m fairly certain that people offering to bring him things is not something he’s been accustomed to. It seems a fairly new concept to him.

“Chocolate? Any kind of food?”

Finally he settles on something. “M and M’s,” and he looks at me and then away, as if embarrassed.

“Plain or peanut?”

“Plain.”

“I’ll do that,” I tell him. And then I ask him if I’m making him nervous. It’s been 45 minutes, and all this time spent interacting with me must be exhausting him.

He doesn’t answer but looks away, and starts to say something, then stops.

“It’s okay,” I tell him, touching his arm and laughing with him, “it’s okay. Do you want me to come back in a couple of days?” He smiles, perhaps because I’d come out and said what he’d wanted to say, that I was exhausting him with my presence, no matter how nice I might be. And he has a ready answer for my question, and he says, “Yes,” right away.

I shake his hand, and I thank him for talking to me, with the unspoken emphasis being that I’m the one who needed to talk, and I let him know that I appreciated his company. I tell him I’ll be back on Wednesday, the day after tomorrow, with M&M’s and more stamps.

I drive home, thinking about how I can sneak in cigarettes, and sneak him out to have one.

R.I.P. Fred

I've been visiting Fred every week since last August.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Fred’s for the usual Sunday morning visit. He was in fine form, for a dying man. He was up, by which I mean he was in his hospital bed, sitting up, leaning against his pillows, awake and playing video poker, smoking a cigarette and telling jokes, though having a bit of a problem remembering things, such as words.

No big. I often have problems with words. They’re slippery things and tend to wander off on their own, slithering away like camouflaged snakes, so you don’t know they’re gone until you can’t find them.

I gave him a nebulizer treatment, and a handful of his noon pills. It’s a big handful, the noon pills.

I fixed him an egg with cheese. Just one this time, not the usual two. And he’d taken to asking for it in a bowl, so he could eat like he used to, when he was in country and used chopsticks. Alas, there were no chopsticks, so he made do with a fork. He ate it all.

I did the dishes, cleaned up, and then helped him with his commode situation, which means, mostly, getting him back into bed from the commode, which is a step away from his bed.

When his wife returned from church I hugged him goodbye, and said I’d see him the next week.

I didn’t. I had to have someone else fill in for me when I realized that the next Sunday was the day Stew died one year ago, and I just couldn’t sit with another dying person on that day. May 31st was already taken as a day of mourning. So instead my charming husband and I took the dogs to the coast and celebrated Stew’s life in our own way. We played on the beach, and we drove down meandering roads just to see where they went, and we even found a pioneer cemetery to explore. I like reading the headstones, even those that can be barely read at all, the ones that have been so marked by time there’s no telling who’s lying there.

Two days later I received a call from the hospice chaplain. Fred passed away on June 1st, his wife and a caregiver by his side.

My first thought was that now Fred can breathe again. No more fighting for air, no more wasting away, unable to do anything for himself. He’s free.

I told my husband, and he said, “You didn’t get to say goodbye to him.”

“I said goodbye to him every time I left,” I said, “because you never know when it’s going to happen.”


R.I.P. Fred

This Sunday With Fred

This Sunday started like most other Sundays. I showed up at Fred’s at my normal time. If I’m one minute early or late, Fred’s wife is sure to let me know. When I drive up, she’s at the back door, watching for me. When I go in I find he’s still sleeping, and she tells me what the weather will be like this week, and then her mother arrives and they go off to church.

Same as every other Sunday.

Twenty minutes later I hear a cry for help from Fred, and when I go to check on him he’s awake and having trouble breathing, and he makes it known he wants help. In fact, he says so. “Help,” he manages to get out, and he points to tell me he wants his nebulizer. He can’t really speak, so desperate is he for breath, but I get the message pretty quickly. I also give him his morphine.
With the nebulizer treatment over he still struggles terribly to breathe, and he looks at me and says, “I’m going to die,” which is a fact I can’t disagree with, though I’m hoping it’s not imminent, so instead I take his hand and tell him that I’m going to get help for him.

I find the phone in the kitchen and I call the answering service for hospice and leave a message for an on-call nurse to call me.

I tell Fred they’ll get back to us, and I hold his hand and ask if there’s anything I can do for him. He holds up five fingers to indicate he wants his oxygen turned up to five, and I go out to the living room and do that, and when I return he’s thrown off his covers and is crying for help.
I take his hand and tell him I’m calling for help again, and this time I call the church where Fred’s wife and mother-in-law are, and I tell the person answering that Fred’s having a problem, and could I please speak to the mother-in-law. She comes on the phone and as I start to tell her about Fred his name completely escapes my mind. I settle for saying “he” instead of his name, because it’s not as if there’s going to be any question who I’m talking about.

She says they’ll be right there. The church is right down the street.

I go back in to Fred and tell him his wife and mother-in-law will be home soon. I raise the head of his bed a bit to make it easier for him to breathe, and I hold his hand and try to be reassuring, though I’m not sure how much use it is. He’s lost all color, the man is white as a ghost, he’s trying to suck in enough air so he won’t feel like he’s suffocating, but it’s so hard for him.
When they come in I’m still holding Fred’s hand. And then the hospice nurse calls back. She tells me to give him more morphine and an anti-anxiety pill. I give him the morphine, I let the wife give him the pill. I’m not supposed to administer drugs, I always hand them to him and let him take them himself. But this time he can’t, she has to put it in his mouth. She tries to get him to drink something, but he can’t, he just wants to breathe.

The mother-in-law is on the other side of the bed holding Fred’s hand, and I’m holding his other hand, and she tells him, “It’s not often you get pretty girls holding both your hands,” and he laughs, my god, he laughs! Or I think it was a laugh, which may not have been a good idea, for then he scritches up his face and starts gasping for air even more.

The color starts to come back to his face, and he opens his eyes and looks at us, and the mother-in-law says, “He’s here!” just about the same time I say, “There he is!” For one second there the look was not one of a desperate man gasping for air, but the look a cheerful Fred would give us when he had a big joke that we weren’t in on yet.

I’ve never had to call them back from church before. Only once before have I had to call the on-call nurse. I’ve never heard Fred say he was going to die, and I’ve never seen him so scared and desperate. I’ve been with Fred on Sundays since August. He wants to make it to his wife’s birthday, which is this next Saturday.

When I left I held his hand and told him I’d see him next Sunday, and that we’d celebrate Mother’s Day then. “We didn’t have much fun today,” I said, “But next week, watch out!” I said this knowing there was no guarantee I’d see him next Sunday, but we can only work with what we have.

What do I get out of it?

This question was asked of me: What do I get out of hospice volunteering?

I get to meet people like Fred and Cecil and Dorothy, and their families. I get to hear their stories, if they want to tell them, and I get an opportunity to keep a part of them with me when they’re gone, an amazing gift that I’ll always have wherever I go, whatever I do. I get to know that my life isn’t all about numbers and taxes and doing things that in the end don’t amount to much. I get the opportunity to help people when I’m most needed, and that helps me too.

Sometimes, it’s the little things that mean the most, because they’re not little after all. Letting someone know that even at the end of their life they’re valued helps me as much as it does them. A few hours a week can change a life. Mine.

“Help! My Wheelchair’s Been Stolen With Me In It!”

April 8, 2009

Or so I imagine Dorothy was saying today. I met Dorothy today for the first time, and she came to me without instructions. Or, I should say, I went to her, and she had no instructions. I knocked on her door at the assisted living facility at the appointed time, but no one answered. An elderly lady wandering the hallway asked if I was looking for Dorothy, no doubt because I was looking confused. When I said yes, she pointed me towards Dorothy, who was parked in the lobby in the wheelchair in front of the tropical fish tank. I saw no handler with her, so I walked up to her and said, “Hi, are you Dorothy?”

The 91 year old looked up at me as if I had two heads. I tried again, a little louder, because I do know she doesn’t hear very well on one side. “Dorothy, hi, I’m Monique.” I smiled.

Dorothy looked at me as if I still had two heads.

Just to ensure I was talking to the right Dorothy I went to the front desk and explained my predicament to a member of the staff. “I was sent here to see Dorothy. Is that her? And did they leave any instructions?”

Turns out it was Dorothy, and no one had mentioned to the front desk that a stranger was going to come in and look after Dorothy for a few hours. However, there was a big binder in Dorothy’s room that might offer some information.

And so it did. It had meticulous notes on what Dorothy had eaten every day for the past five months, and the times she’d been prayed over, and when she slept. It didn’t really tell me what they wanted me to do.

So I went back out to the lobby and asked Dorothy if she’d like to go for a walk. I meant I’d walk and she’d sit, but I didn’t think I needed to explain that. She tried to say something, and though I couldn’t understand what she was trying to say, it didn’t sound like a protest.

“Okay,” I said, “We’re going outside for a walk!”

It may have been a look of terror in Dorothy’s eyes. I’m not really sure. It was there, and then gone again. Besides, I couldn’t see from my position behind the wheelchair.

One of the residents sitting in the lobby waved to us as we left. Friendly bunch of people. I could have been kidnapping Dorothy, and no one would have noticed. I could have loaded her in my car and driven away, and several hours later perhaps someone would say, “Has anyone seen Dorothy lately?”

I’m sure Dorothy was wondering how much money her family could get their hands on quickly for the ransom, but she didn’t complain too much. Then again, I’m not sure she could have complained at all, so perhaps internally she was screaming for help. I got us stuck going through the doors only once, when the wheelchair wouldn’t go over the doorframe, but I backed up and tried again. I couldn’t bang her around too much since she has a problem with pain, as in, she feels a lot of it, so I made some attempt at being gentle.

I steered her down the sidewalk and around the building, attempting to make small talk. “Nice day out today.”

Dorothy: “Aaahhhhh?”

“Yes, I think it’s very nice out. How do you feel today?”

Dorothy: “Eeek.”

As we rounded the last corner Dorothy spoke up, with real words: “Upstairs.”

I repeated, “Upstairs? You want to go upstairs?”

Dorothy: “Upstairs.”

We went back in the front door and I stopped at the front desk again. “Dorothy says she wants to go upstairs. Is there anything going on up there?”

The desk attendant said, “Noooo, maybe she just wants to look around.”

So Dorothy and I took the elevator up to the second floor and wandered the hallways. She pointed at one doorway in much excitement, a resident’s room, but I couldn’t tell what she wanted, or if she wanted anything, or if she just liked the looks of the place. One resident’s room had a nameplate saying “Fred Astaire.” I’ve often wondered what happened to him.

Then I sat down next to Dorothy and tried to figure out what we should do next. She looked at my nametag and said, “Monique.” Wow. She said my name! And she smiled! I think she was getting used to the concept of being kidnapped.

One of the helpful people who worked there wandered by, and the two of us engaged Dorothy in a conversation consisting of the following:

“Do you want to go back to your room?”

“Urrgghh.”

“Are you tired?”

“Ahhhhh.”

Then the helpful staff person said to me, “She usually just sits in her room all day, so she might be tired by now.”

Well, yes, thanks for mentioning it. We’d been out exploring the entire facility and now they tell me she doesn’t get out much? I don’t care. We had fun.

I returned Dorothy to her room, and called for an attendant to put her back into bed. You don’t want an inexperienced volunteer picking up a frail 91 year old who’s in considerable pain. They’ve got experts for these sorts of things.

Dorothy slept. I fielded calls from hospice. The family had called and asked if I could feed her when lunch arrived. Like did they think I’d stand by and refuse to feed her? What kind of kidnapper do I look like?

Lunch arrived and I didn’t wake Dorothy up. How could I wake her up? She was so cute, sleeping.

Once she did wake up it took us an hour to have lunch.

“Would you like some juice?”

“Eeeeek!” With a hand up to ward off demons, or bad juice.

“Want some of this?”

“What is it?”

Like I knew. Some sort of beef with pasta. But once she tried it she liked it. I’d either feed her, or load the fork with food and she’d try it herself. Cauliflower also received the “Eeeeek!” raised hand sign, and so did the cranberry juice. Occasionally she’d stick her hand in the plate. I don’t know why, or what she was trying to tell me, but I’d remove her hand and wipe it clean. Once she grabbed my hand and held it, and smiled at me.

Then she coughed and spit up food all over herself.

How cute is that?

When I left I thanked her for letting me visit her, and I think she breathed a sigh of relief. It’s always good when the kidnapper leaves without making good on their threats.

"Damn Dummy!"

Today’s hospice patient, just a fill-in, a one-time thing, is not shy about expressing his feelings.

His wife greeted me at the door, a seemingly cheerful woman in her sixties, and when I walked in there he was, in the hospital bed facing away from the door, and he craned his neck around to see who was coming in.

“Hello,” I said to him, though I’d been warned he wouldn’t talk to me, and if he did, he would most likely yell and call me names.

He kept looking at me as if he were seeing a bug he might recognize, but isn’t sure.

I ask, anyway, “How are you?”

No response, just angry eyes from the man with the white hair and beard. He bears no relation to Santa Claus, not being the least bit jolly. An unhappy Santa, perhaps.

His wife said, “He doesn’t talk, unless he wants something.”

I smiled back at her and told her it wasn’t a problem. She showed me around the tiny little house. Showed me where the supplies were, should they be needed, what to do should he need to relieve himself. He’d need help, of course. I hoped he wouldn’t be needing anything during my stay. I really really hoped. The television was on, and she said he liked to have it on to distract him, but that I could change the channel. Nope, not me. I change nothing that seems to be working. Besides, I always bring a book to read and a book to write in, and my G1 for texting.

The wife left, after thanking me again for staying with old sourpuss.

That was mean of me. Strike that.

I sat on the couch, which faces the back of the house. His hospital bed also faces the back of the house, fortunately, so he didn’t have to look at me. And he slept.

Occasionally he’d move a bit, lift a hand up and examine it, as if looking for something. Then it’d fall back down, and he’d fall asleep. Or ignore me. I could usually tell when he was sleeping because his breathing would change.

Once, during one of the afternoon judge shows, he laughed. I thought it was a laugh, but I could be wrong. Maybe it was a snort. Maybe it was disgust with the human race. Then he fell back asleep.

I looked at the pictures on the wall. Framed photos of husband and wife, the wife always smiling, the husband, not so much. Pictures of children, but whose? The wife has no support from anyone other than hospice. There is no family to help, no friends. I’m told he drove everyone away with his anger. Maybe he wasn’t always like this, maybe the brain tumor isn’t helping matters much, but I don’t think he was ever much of a people person.

He’s just mean.

He woke up after a couple of hours and threw off his covers. In my experience, which is, admittedly, limited, this does not lead to good things. He then said something that sounded like his wife’s name, Sandra. I got up and went over to his bed where he could see me, and I told him, “She’ll be back in about half an hour.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Monique, I’m here to help you while she’s gone.”

“Who?”

“Monique. Is there anything I can get for you?”

“I want Sandra.” I think that’s what he said. It was a bit . . . muffled.

“I know, and she’ll be here in a little while.”

“No! Now, I want her now!”

He was quite adamant.

“I know, and she’ll be here soon.”

“DAMN DUMMY!” He twisted his head to give me the full on effect of his anger and continued, “I want Sandra NOW!”

And dog help me, for I like to think I’m a compassionate and kind person, but I started to smile, because as much as he might yell for Sandra, she’d get back when she got back, and not a moment sooner.

“Well, she’ll be here in a while.”

I walked back to the couch and sat down, and tried to maintain my composure, no giggling at the patients. There wasn’t much point in continuing the conversation, since all he wanted to do was insist on the immediate appearance of his wife.

The man is dying, there’s one person present who can help him if he needs help, get him whatever he asks for, and he calls her a damn dummy? I’m used to, much too often, calling myself similar epithets, but when a 68 year old dying man calls me that it only amuses me.

Apparently unsatisfied with my performance, he began to moan and groan. “Ahhhhh, ooooooh, arrrgghhhh.” If it were anyone else, I would ask if there was anything I could do, but I’d already tried that. So I continued to watch Judge Joe, or Cops, or whatever was on at that moment, and he continued to moan and groan. It had no effect on me. I checked my email. Sent some texts.

I’m heartless.

When Sandra came home she said the doctor told her she needed to lose weight. Her husband, ever helpful, said, “Better get started then!”

When I left she thanked me for sitting with him, and I wanted to tell her something, but I wasn’t sure what. Good luck? I’m sorry? I hope your entire life with this man hasn’t been a living hell? Instead I told her it was no problem, which it wasn’t. I’m not the one who has to be there all the time, after all.

This patient is the polar opposite of my favorite patient, Fred, who’s still hanging in there, and having me write down the life stories he always wanted to write. We do a little bit at a time because he runs out of air quickly. But does he like to talk! Fred likes everyone. In his stories, he’s always saying how nice people were, how grateful he is, and how much he appreciates everything he’s had.

The Exit Industry

When I walk in to the hospice facility the air is still, as if it daren’t even move in a place where people are preparing to die. I pass by rooms with empty beds and think this is good – most people are kept at their homes as much as they can be, but sometimes it’s not enough, and sometimes they come here for respite care and then they return home, and often they don’t return home at all.

Fred was moved here on Thursday for respite care, an event he does not recall but it must have happened all the same for here he is, in room 109. A nurse points me in the right direction but then adds, “But I think he just went to sleep.”

No problem. Fred’s wife, Jenifer, is standing in the hallway, and when she sees me she squeals as only a 49-year old woman can, and goes into Fred’s room, saying, “Monique’s here, she’s here!”

I walk in and Fred’s eyes get big and light up while he holds out both arms for a hug. (This is not unusual. I am often greeted like this when I walk into rooms, assuming there are people in said rooms.) He looks like nothing so much as an imp, or an impish elf, though an impish elf in need of a shave.

We hug, and I ask how he is. What a question. I always ask it anyway though. He asks how I am, and I tell him I’m good.

Jenifer tells us the temperature has gone up two degrees, and neither Fred nor I know what she’s talking about. At first I think she means Fred’s temperature, but then she says it went up to 72, so I’m pretty sure it’s not Fred she’s talking about. Turns out she means the room temperature. Jenifer is great at keeping track of weather and temperatures and important calendar dates, like daylight savings time. Every time I see her she reminds me when to change my clocks. Fred says that of course the room temperature went up, once I showed up. That Fred.

We discuss the relative merits of Ensure. Chocolate is the only flavor that’s at all digestible, in case you were wondering. Don’t even worry about the other flavors, just stick with chocolate.

We discover how he came to be there, which he doesn’t remember. It was by ambulance. Shame to have an ambulance ride and not remember it, I tell him. After all, how many opportunities do you get for that?

I ask Fred if there’s anything I can bring him when I come see him again, and he says, “Bring a piece of paper. On it write, ‘Release Fred . . . ‘” and I laugh and say, “Sure, I’d e happy to, but I don’t think they’ll listen to me.”

Jenifer explains that the doctor has to make that decision, which both Fred and I know, but we let her explain the process.

Fred is tired, so I tell him I’ll see him in a couple of days. He’s planning on being well by Monday to go back home, and I tell him he better get some sleep then. He grasps my hand firmly in his and tells me it was nice to see me. I tell him it was nice to see him too.

It’s a 45 mile drive back home (45 miles there too – merely a coincidence?) and I find myself thinking about the Exit Industry. This is an industry that isn’t going to get smaller, only bigger. Demand will only go up as more and more of us get old. Not me, of course, but some of the others of us. Could be a big money maker, or at least a secure career field.

Also, not only is it a wonderful business opportunity, it would make a fantastic musical. One of those elaborate Busby Berkeley affairs with chorus girls and precise geometrics, with the previously decrepit dying singing and dancing as if they’d already ascended to heaven. Perhaps they could rise up against a particularly evil offshoot of the Exit Industry and enlist others to their cause. There could be a tragic-comic romance between two or more cast members, dying or not, it doesn’t really matter, as long as they can sing and dance, and at the end the entire cast does a number that brings down the house.

So fascinated am I with this scenario that I pull in at a convenient rest stop (for once, there’s one where I need it), pull out my notebook, and start writing it down. Is this not a fabulous idea? Now I just need to find some backers to invest. Beat the rush and send your check now.

Eggs for Fred

Jenifer, Fred’s wife, tells me, when I arrive at Fred’s today, that he wants me to wake him up so I can make him something to eat and put cream on his Agent Oranged arms and legs. I go into his room and he has the covers pulled up over his head, a self-made mummy. I start to talk to him to wake him up, and Jenifer comes in behind me, turns on the lights, and bellows, “Wake up!” Hers is not the gentle approach. She’s with him every day though, and I am only here a few hours a week.

Fred rouses himself enough to pull the covers off his head. He’s listless. He looks tired and frail and insubstantial, as if he were turning into a wraith. Can he be getting smaller? I’m not sure how.

He asks for eggs with cheese. I ask if he’d like some toast, too, and he says yes, half, cut in quarters.

Out to the kitchen I go, Jenifer trailing behind me. Her mother should be along to pick her up anytime now, and until then she will watch every move I make, as if not trusting my ability to scramble a couple of eggs with cheese.

I can’t fault her for that. For Jenifer, rules and procedures are the most important thing. It’s how she retains information, it’s how she learns. She’s not very likely to do things out of order, and she expects that I too will follow this order

I get out the eggs, break two into a bowl. Put a pan on the stove, turn the stove on, and put a bit of margarine in the pan.

“The non-stick spray is in the pantry,” she tells me, expecting me to follow the rules. I thank her for letting me know but do not move towards the pantry.

“It keeps things from sticking,” she tells me, since I obviously haven’t caught on. I agree with her that indeed it does, and then there’s a car outside, honking for her to come out and go to church.

I scramble the eggs with milk and Velveeta, salt and pepper to taste. My taste, though I don’t taste it. Toast a piece of bread, put margarine and a bit of sugar-free strawberry jelly on it, and cut it into fourths. I arrange the toast triangles around the edges of the plate and put the eggs in the middle. I’ve used the first plate on the top, a blue speckled plate that could be army issue for all its decorativeness.

I take the plate, a fork, and a napkin back in to Fred’s bedroom.

Fred has pulled the covers up over his head and gone back to sleep.

“I have eggs for you,” I say, and start to pull the covers back from his face.

His eyes blink, open slowly as if not sure what I want with him. Then it comes back to him, and he reaches for the bed controls to raise himself from laying to sitting, at least sort of. He blinks a few times in an effort to clear the sleep from his eyes. I swing the table over the bed, the plate of eggs now in front of him.

He picks up the fork, trembling, his hands engaged in their own rhythm. He brings a forkful of eggs to his mouth and looks, for at least a moment, happy, as if the eggs meet all his expectations. Perhaps they do.

He reaches for his coffee, cold now, and I worry about the possibility of him spilling it, so much does his hand shake. The table is in the way, so I pull it away so he can drink, then help him set it back down and move the table close in to him so it is right beneath his chin.

I sit on the porta-potty, lid down, by the bed while he eats, repeating the table maneuvers when he wants a drink. He eats all the eggs and half the toast, then says, “I don’t know where, but there’s some applesauce . . .” and I finish for him by saying, “I’ll get you some.”

I bring a small bowl of applesauce back to him and he eats it all, but declines any more.

“I’m eating like a pig,” he says, “Everything that gets put in front of me.” He makes a face to indicate how ridiculous this must be.

“That’s good,” I say, “You need to eat. Eating is good.” He smiles at me.

He’s worn himself out with eating, and he tries to remember what else it was he wanted. I stand, egg plate in my hand, while he starts to talk. He tells me there was a meeting, about him, in this room, with everyone wanting to know how to make him comfortable. He talks about his caregivers, how good they all are to him. He counts me among them but I do not, not really. I’m just the Sunday volunteer, filling in on a day no one else is available. It is always just Fred and I alone; I never see anyone else involved in his care, just notes they may, now and then, leave behind.

“Cream,” he remembers, “Have you put cream on my legs?”

“No, but I certainly can.”

I put on the white plastic gloves I wear when doing personal care. I pull up the covers at the foot of the bed to reveal two thin little legs, the skin so brittle it looks like thin parchment paper, so dry I don’t know how it stays on his body at all.

I rub cream into his shins, the skin is so frail and dry I worry about tearing it. Can it tear? I don’t know. I’m an accountant, and we’re not taught much about these things in accounting school. I rub cream on the shins and the calves, carefully.

It’s cold to him, and so I cover the frail legs back up and tuck the covers in neatly around him.

He adjusts the bed so he’s laying back down again, and I tell him to get some sleep. He pulls the covers back over his head, making himself into a mummy again, and I turn out the light on my way out.

I wash the dishes and pan I’ve dirtied, steal a piece of bread and toast it. I hadn’t eaten yet today and after I got here Jenifer told me she’d be late. It’s not like me to take food from a patient’s house, but I rationalize away one piece of toast.

Then I sit in the living room, only the sound of the oxygen machine saying anything at all, and I write this out in longhand in the book I always carry with me.

And this is where I am now. When I get home this afternoon I will type this out, and then post it. You will come along and read it, and think, perhaps, that you are glad it is not you who is dying. I hope so. Fred would tell you to live now, enjoy yourself now, because we don’t know what tomorrow will bring.

A Hospice Story - Cecil

This morning I find myself wondering if Cecil has made it through the night. Last night, when I sat with him, he was in the process of dying, and it was progressing as active dying does.

I met Cecil last night, when I was asked to provide a couple of hours of respite care so his daughter could get a couple of things done. He was in a recliner when I got there, deceptively sitting up as if ready to get up and go somewhere, but when I took his hand in mine it was slack, and he didn’t seem to know I, or anyone else, was there. His breathing had already become more shallow and pained, the “death rattle” present.

His daughter and I talked while we waited for her brother to make a couple of phone calls, and she briefed me on his condition. Just several days ago he was ambulatory and verbal, old but not dying, and then he suddenly declined. That was when hospice got involved. She had moved here less than two months ago to be close to him, since there was no other family in the area. She’d been in the habit of picking him up at the assisted living facility every day and taking him to her house, where she’d make him lunch. On Sundays they went to church. Cecil was Salvation Army, she told me.

Cecil sat in the middle of the small living room in his recliner, his daughter in a chair on one side of the room, I on a couch on another side, and I kept glancing at him to make sure he was comfortable, at least as far as I could tell. She told me that he’d started becoming more affectionate in the past few days, suddenly going in for hugging and such, which had never been the case with him before. A couple of days ago he’d brushed his daughter’s face with his hand and said, “I love you,” something he’d never said to her before, not in over 60 years.

She told me that if the other brother, Cecil Jr., came back, not to let him in. He’d been volatile earlier, and he had some issues. He’d never fully recovered from Vietnam either. I told her I would lock the door and keep Cecil’s environment calm.

It’s difficult to know a person who’s in the process of dying. Cecil wasn’t speaking, or tracking, and all I had to go on was what his daughter told me. We talked about death and dying and how difficult it is, whether or not one’s ready. It doesn’t matter, because you can never be quite ready for it. Cecil had asked her, back when he was voicing these things, for an overdose of something so he could get it over with. He was ready to go. But of course that’s illegal. Sometimes they’re ready to go but don’t know how.

His daughter warned me that while they were gone Cecil may want to move to the hospital bed in the living room, or that he may even want to move to the bed in the bedroom. He might want to take off his clothes, which consisted of shorts and a shirt, and that the shorts stay on. If he gets into the hospital bed without his shirt, keep the blanket from touching his skin by hanging it from the metal bars that keep him from falling out. An attendant brought his dinner. If he wanted to eat, he’d probably want the fruit. He’d had all his meds for the time being. I looked at Cecil. He hadn’t moved since I’d gotten there, hadn’t uttered a word, and I couldn’t, for the life of me, imagine him doing any of the things she said he might do.

We waited for the hospice nurse. She was bringing more meds and coming to check on his condition. By the time Eileen’s brother returned, ready to go, she still hadn’t arrived, and I told them to go ahead, and to take their time. “What if we get back after 8?” Eileen asked me, as if I’d suddenly disappear at the appointed time. “I’ll still be here,” I told them, “I have nowhere else to go tonight, so take your time, get some dinner. “

Her brother told me he’d talked to Cecil Jr., and he’d calmed down, and it was okay to let him in if he came back, and to please stay close by, but not necessarily too close. They left then, taking Zach, the Welsh corgi who’d been sleeping at my feet. I love assisted living facilities that let dogs in. Cecil’s previous one, the Waterford, hadn’t been as generous.

They left, and I turned on the television to the Blazers game just in case Cecil wanted to see it. It was the only thing he would want to see, if he were to want to see anything at all. I sat on the couch with my book and my journal, and I watched Cecil to see if he showed any signs of getting up and taking off his clothes. He showed no signs at all, just the slow hitched breathing.

The nurse arrived, apologetic and upset that she was so late, but she’d had a difficult intake earlier that had put her behind. I reassured her, with all my lowly volunteer authority, that it was quite all right. She wasn’t convinced, but she accepted my gesture in the spirit in which it was intended. She checked Cecil’s vital signs, which were showing signs that he was indeed dying, and she took off his socks to check his feet, which were indeed cold.

She asked me how I was. I told her I was fine. I have no fear of the dying. I can’t disappoint them, and if I do happen to do so, it’s not a lingering disappointment. I’m calm when I’m with the dying because they have enough going on inside of themselves as it is. I think of dying, in these cases, as a release, which is then not a bad thing. I suppose it’s surprising that I’m not scared of the dying because I’m scared of so many other things, but there it is.

The nurse gave Cecil Ativan to calm him, just in case he needed to be calmed. She watched him for a bit. She asked if I’d be okay if he died while I was alone with him. I told her I’d be fine. If he died, I knew who to call, and I’d sit with him while I waited for the professionals. It’s not a difficult job. She left then, after we hugged. I think she needed a hug.

A little bit later Cecil Jr came to the door, and after I introduced myself he sat down on the floor next to his father’s chair silently, saying nothing. I moved away so they’d have some privacy, but kept watching Cecil. It looked like his head was starting to slump forward, so I asked Cecil Jr to help me recline the chair a bit so he’d be more comfortable. We did, and it did look more comfortable, though Cecil was still not letting us know one way or the other.

The other brother returned after a bit, sans Eileen and Zach, who would be following along shortly. I told him about the Ativan, and that things were progressing as expected, and to feel free to call hospice at any time, and that hospice would be checking back with him of course.

Eileen called me later, after I’d gotten home, and wanted to know what the nurse had said. I told her everything I could, and when she asked if the nurse had said how long, I told her no, that he was actively dying, but no one knows how long it will take. No one knows. The nurse wanted to stop back in the morning, but then wasn’t sure if he’d last that long. I didn’t tell Eileen that, she knew. I was out of my depth, so I reassured her that things were progressing as they should, and to call hospice at any time and they would get right back to her. I told her to call me if she needed more respite or if there was anything else I could help with, and we made tentative arrangements for me to come back on Sunday afternoon for a couple of hours. The need for this seemed unlikely, but, like I said, no one knows, so I told her that I would be there if I was needed, and if she needed anything sooner, to let me know.

So now I wonder where Cecil is at. Is he here still, or is he there? I’m not entirely sure he was even here last night as it is, though physically he was. Perhaps he’s just a bit closer now. Or perhaps he’s gotten ambitious enough to get up and take off his clothes.

February 2, 2009

VISITING FRED

Every Sunday I visit with Fred. He’s still, as they say, hanging in there. He no longer travels from the hospital bed in his bedroom to the hospital bed in the living room, and the living room now has a big empty space where the hospital bed used to be. He was falling down too much, and even though he’s faded to 115 pounds, he’s still difficult to maneuver should that happen again. All his time is spent in his bedroom, in his bed, with his PlayStation and his VCR movies, all of which he’s watched several times.

Some weeks I make him something to eat, or I sit out in the living room while he sleeps or plays, or I rub cream on the increasingly fragile skin on his head and chest. I always wear gloves for this process, and I’ve mastered the art of getting the gloves on and off again without cross contamination issues.

But yesterday Fred just wanted to talk, so I sat on the portable commode, the only seat that faces Fred, and we talked. The seat was down on the commode, in case you were wondering.

Fred’s hoping for another six months, when his wife turns 50 and his passing will leave her with a bit more security. His wife and her mother tell him he has less than a month however. These things are wildly unpredictable of course. He has no pain, he tells me, and he’s breathing okay, though of course he’s on permanent oxygen. He says it’s more for the placebo effect of knowing it’s there than anything else. I’m not quite sure I believe that, but I go along with it.

Fred makes a lot of jokes and laughs a lot, even though he’s frustrated. He’s irritated that he can’t take care of himself, that his legs don’t work, that he can’t get outside and go anywhere.

He asks me if it’s true what he’s heard about the current economic crisis. He says he’d just heard about it, he had no idea things were that bad. How would he know?

He tells me he’s going to be buried in a veterans’ cemetery in Portland and that, oddly enough, his wife will later be buried on top of him. “I’m not sure I like that,” he tells me, “It’s too much like the Germans, digging trenches and piling people on top of each other.”

He’d rather just be cremated, but it’s not what his family wants, so he’s going along with it. He says it won’t matter to him anyway, once it’s gotten to that point. I tell him the story of Stew’s cremation and how we dispersed his ashes in the Sound last year, and that I still have some of them. Am I not supposed to talk about death with a dying man? Fred likes the story though.

Fred as a young man was a troublemaker, one of those boys who breaks into things and vandalizes because, as he says, “there was nothing else to do.” Likely excuse, I tell him, and he laughs.

He’s had a haircut recently, a good thing, since I was having trouble, on previous visits, with rubbing cream into his dry scalp because there was so much hair to work through. It’s now back to the short Marine cut that he’s had for so much of his adult life.

“Were your ears burning yesterday?” he asks me, and I ask if he’s been telling stories about me again. He laughs. I’m impressed with how well he’s holding up with the talking and laughing, though sometimes he searches for words and he can’t quite find them. But his energy level is high. He was talking to someone about the military yesterday, how he was, as a Marine, put in charge of loading an Air Force plane, and he had no idea what a pallet was at the time, and he would have just shoved everything in haphazardly, so he’d asked an Air Force sergeant to show him how it was done, and he learned all about pallets and loading planes. I like that about Fred, that he’s willing to ask how to do things he hasn’t done before. It seems a natural enough thing, but there are many of us who neglect to do that.

He starts to get tired eventually. No surprise there – I’m surprised he was this talkative. It takes a lot of energy, something Fred has in short supply. I ask him if he’s ready for a nap, and he lowers his bed, and I make sure he’s comfortable. He grasps my hand and thanks me for talking with him, and I tell him I enjoy it. “Don’t believe 90% of what I say, it’s b.s.” and he laughs, and I respond with, “Then it’s much like talking to my husband!”

I turn out the light and go out into the living room while Fred falls asleep. His wife returns home ten minutes later, and I tell her I’ll see them both again next Sunday. As I’m leaving she’s waking him up to take more medication. Structure is one of the ways she holds on.

December 7, 2008

SUNDAY WITH FRED

Fred looked good today, or at least as good as someone dying from emphysema can look, which is to say, he looked happy, and he’s as active as someone can be who rarely gets out of bed, and then only as a necessity. Though each week he looks a bit frailer, he still laughs more uproariously than someone on oxygen should, and he is always happy to see me.

When I got there today he was playing a golf game with his new Playstation. His last one finally quit on him, and for his birthday he got a new one. There are not many activities he can do anymore, so anything that keeps him entertained is good. His little television/VCR sit on a table close to his bed, but not so close that he doesn’t need help when he wants to watch a new movie. That’s one of the things I’m there for, to attend to whatever he wants while his wife is off at church. We have a good time together, Fred and I, and though sometimes he does nothing but sleep, he always feels like he should be entertaining me while I’m there, as if I’m some sort of special guest, and not a hospice volunteer. I’ve explained this to him, that I’m there to help him with whatever he needs, and if it’s sleep he wants, to just go right ahead. I can entertain myself quite well out in the living room while he does his thing.

Today he and his wife wanted to tell me how much they appreciated the birthday cards Fred received last week from people he didn’t know, people who wished him happy birthday, his 65th, and thanked him for his service in the Marines. “It brought a tear to my eyes,” said Fred. “Yeah,” said his wife, Jenifer, who’s learning disabled, “It did, make sure you thank them.” I told them I would. All I’d done was let people know that it was Fred’s birthday, and that if anyone wanted to send him cards, I knew he’d like that. And people, some of whom don’t even know me in real life, sent him cards.

Later, after Jenifer left for church, Fred told me that he so much appreciates how kind people have been, and that people, as a whole, have made up for the unhappy memories of coming back from Vietnam, a place he didn’t want to be in the first place, and being spit on.

I made Fred a bowl of oatmeal. He also likes my grilled cheese sandwiches and eggs with cheese. He wanted to finish his golf game and then finish a movie he’d been watching, so I told him he knew where to find me if he needed me. He laughed, and I said, “Well, don’t come looking for me! Just call me and I’ll be right here.” I sat in the living room with my MP3 player. It’s always peaceful at Fred’s on Sundays while his wife is at church with her mother.

After the movie ended, with what sounded like several loud explosions, Fred called me, accidentally saying “Monica,” instead of “Monique,” which he always apologizes for, and I always tell him it’s okay. “No, it’s not,” he says, “Your name’s Monique.”

He starts talking about Vietnam. The VA recently decided he was 30% disabled from Vietnam, from being exposed to Agent Orange or something, and Fred said, “I wish they knew it was all of me in those rice paddies, not just 30%!” But he’s not bitter, he says these things as an amusing anecdote. He tells me of terrible things he saw in Vietnam, things that may make some people uncomfortable to hear, but I’m not into censoring what people need to say. Sometimes things just need to be said and heard, even when it’s hard to say, and hard to listen to. I empathize, as much as someone who served 6 years in peacetime can. I hold his hand when he extends it, and I listen to his stories. “War criminals,” he tells me, “Some of them should have gone to prison,” and when they wanted him to run over someone’s head with heavy machinery he wouldn’t do it, but the POW talked anyway. Later they took the POW up in a helicopter and let him out, without a parachute. Fred can’t say he killed anyone, but he shot plenty, and he was an expert marksman, qualified for the Olympics, so there’s a pretty good chance he did, but it’s not something he wants to think about. But what bothers him the most, still, is the dog he had to kill. A camp mascot who was so sick, and the medic could do nothing for her, and suggested Fred put her out of her misery. There was no ammo, so he beheaded her. This is the worst thing he’s done, he tells me, and being a total dog person myself, I tell him he did what needed to be done, and I know it must have been hard.

He gets a tear in his eye again, when he tells me how grateful he is to everyone who helps him now, and how he hates relying on people (always making sure to tell me it’s not that he doesn’t appreciate everything everyone does for him, as if I’ll be offended), but he tells me it’s just watery eyes.

His conversation meanders, and I would get lost if I didn’t keep listening, for eventually he comes back around to his point. In the middle of a story he starts talking about cotton balls, and I come to understand he needs Caladryl on his shoulders and his neck. I get the cotton balls, put on my gloves (I touch him and hug him when arriving and departing, squeeze his hand now and then, all without gloves, but I’ve been trained to put gloves on), and dab on Caladryl on the dry red areas. His skin is so dry and fragile anymore. Then he wants the white cream on his scalp and face, and I dip into the container of white cream and rub white cream over his forehead and into his scalp, and along his cheeks and his nose. I make jokes about how I’m restyling his hair, it’s going to be spiked by the time I get done with it, which is easy to do when the hair is short and it’s full of white cream. I take special care to make it stand up, and I tell him how cute it is, the perfect look for him. We talk about using green food coloring next time, and I say that for Christmas I can use red too, so he'll be appropriately decorated, the perfect Christmas elf. He does have elflike qualities, he's small and growing frailer, and if there were a standard for elf eyes, Fred has them.

He keeps talking, about his time living in LA, about how he used to drink, way back then, about fun things he did, even in Vietnam, things that don’t involve killing or even war. He laughs now and then, and asks if I’m French, he knows some of the language. I tell him I’m not, and then I tell him where my name really came from, it’s still a family joke that my father was retelling as recent as last summer. Fred says it’s a good name, it’s musical, and I attribute this to the morphine.

When his wife came home we were still laughing, and when I said goodbye and that I’d see him next week, he said to make sure I told people thank you for making him feel special and appreciated, and he thanked me for coming. “I’m happy I could be here,” I answered, and went out in the pouring rain for my drive home.