100 words per minute (with the gold pin to prove it)

This is a story about a very proud woman.

Born in Canada to immigrants from the British Isles. Her mother was from the beautiful Lake District near Coniston in England and her father was from just outside Glasgow. She was never anything in her own mind but 100% Scottish. She lived with her husband of a half-century in a beautiful oceanfront home after their retirement to the Island.

The entire upstairs of their home was one huge bedroom. It overlooked the most famous and beautiful beach in this area with a view that was breath-taking no matter how many times you saw it. There was a library area in this room, a reading nook complete with a pale peach leather couch, an ensuite with a very large and deep jacuzzi tub and a separate shower. The closet area was bigger than most peoples bedrooms. There was still enough room for a HUGE largescreen television which she only allowed on to watch her favourite show:
"Keeping Up Appearances."

Those big closets of theirs were 5% the husbands clothes and 95% hers.
Stuffed full of fashionable outfits and shoes all in boxes neatly stacked near the shelves where the matching purses were housed. Inside the handbags were change purses in the same shade.. Each box had a description neatly written in her beautiful and distinctive script in the same place as all the others. She wore no make-up but very light lipstick, and the blonde oak dresser had two full drawers where dozens of Revlon, Max Factor and Mary Kay lipsticks awaited her whim.

Her bathroom was mirrors and tile. The counter had Chanel #5 powder alongside the perfume and cologne.
She was surrounded by all the pleasures and comforts money could buy. Her chief comfort was her dedicated and selfless husband who considered it his duty to attend to very every need. It was a high calling he felt. Each night she insisted on taking a long hot bath and her husband would lift her out of it and into her bed. She refused to use a commode. She would not use a walker. She would not even consider an incontinent system. Those topics were absolutely forbidden. The word "death" was also on that list. "Cancer" was the other word not allowed.

She held court in her king-size bed and the view was out to sea. Her visitors could sit in the wingback chairs and watch the resort stayers frolicking on the mile-long white sands.

This Lady was very sick, in fact she was palliative. She had refused a colostomy because of her distaste for the "bag". This decision resulted in her being dramatically affected in the frequency and proximity department. She could not go anywhere. She had a solution. She bought a motorhome to travel in. You could see her all around the area, a gaunt figure gripping the steering wheel. It was a little scary for those of us who knew how ill she was.

Her husband did everything for her. She sent him out for pudding and boost and ice-cream: whatever her tastebuds fancied in the moment. He would get so very hopeful and bring home 5 of whatever she asked for. Unfortunatly she could no longer eat. She had just finished a round of radiation treatments. The desire for food had left her. She was more than disinterested in food. She could not even force herself to eat. Radiation can be bad that way. She wore her wedding rings on her third finger now and even then they slipped and slid. Her once tight watch hung limply at her wrist. She continued to wear it because she said it was the first really frivilously expensive piece of jewellery her husband had bought for her. It had an moscaic face and diamonds around the dial. The strap was 18ct gold. Even in her worst moments, the jewels remained on.

It had been almost 18 months since the Doctors had told her husband her death was imminent.
Since then, she had spent tens of thousands of dollars in experimental treatments.
Possibly more than that.
She also volunteered to take experimental chemotherapy.
It was very difficult to watch her go so forcefully ahead with these methods when the odds were overwhelmingly against her. Her husband had a heart attack in the middle of her treatment. The stress was piling up and up and up.

It was the Hospital Social Worker who finally let the family know that Community Care was available. Noone had offered anything before. Not that she would have accepted it. She was too proud. After her husband's heart attack and recovery she knew she had to let someone help, or she would lose him.

The assignment was overnight care. The idea was that her husband could take a sleeping pill and get a good nights rest. She then could sleep downstairs in a hospital bed with the healthcare worker sitting near for any needs she might have. A butterfly injection site was put in for Haldol

Now Haldol is a very good drug. It is used to counteract mania and to combat the side-effects from cancer drugs. This woman had not slept a full night for months. The Haldol would help with that.
But the mind is a powerful thing and this woman had a very strong mind and will.
Night #1 she threw the worker out.
Night #2 she asked the new worker to get her something from upstairs, and took her carkeys and tried to escape in her motorhome. The only reason she didn't was her lack of strength.
She got to the Motorhome. She got the door open. She could not get herself up high enough to get in, thank God.
Night #3 the worker well-orientated and on-guard was a little harder to fool so she pretended to sleep. Around 4am she crawled over her bedrail, and down the hall and up the stairs on her hands and knees to her bed. She couldnt get into the bed. Her husband fell over her at 6am when he got up to the bathroom. Clearly, we had it wrong.

The new improved plan was to give the workers the assignment to TALK to her all night. This worked like a charm. The Haldol was discontinued due to her screaming each time she was injected (it is almost painless) and the Workers were culled down to 4 hardy souls who got on well with her.

The woman on the hill could talk and talk the entire shift without ever repeating herself.
The story she told each and every worker was not about her adored husband. Not about her 4 kids of whom she was very protective and proud even if they DID drive her to distraction. No it was about her secretarial training. She had wanted to be a Doctor. Her mother had told her that she could do anything she wanted but if she chose University, it meant absolutely no dating. She was already in love, life-long consuming love with her future husband so she chose secretarial school and business college which came without the dating clause.

She was not very challenged by it, so she concentrated on proficiency. She attained a typing speed of 100 words per minute on a manual typewriter and was the very first recipient of a gold pin to honour this achievement. Every worker and every Nurse and even the Doctors had seen this pin which she brought out at the climax of the story to proudly display. Stories about her career at the University stories about her prestigious job as the Secretary to the Chief of Police, stories about her work.... it was very important to her that these women and men knew she had DONE something. She had MATTERED.

Each morning the Workers would leave looking worn out. They cried and sobbed and wombled their way to their cars. The woman got the nicname *Boadacia*.

The carebook was full of entries like this:
"family present. tension in the home."

The small team of Nurses and caregivers were relieved when the husband hired private Nurses to care for her full-time, and the Healthcare team only had to go in 3 nights a week.
When she died, each caregiver said it was the hardest assignment they had ever had.
The funeral was packed.
The Nurses and Care-givers sat in the pew behind us.

The woman on the hill was my Mother.
It has been 7 years now.
Nothing can ever take your mother away from you.
Not unless you want it to.

I miss you Mom.
You were unique.
Anything in me of great spirit and compassion is from you.
For all that you gave to me and all the blessings I did not see at the time, thank you.
You were an indomitable personality.
Heaven is much spicier with you up there, I know it!

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A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us; when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.--Washington Irving