Teardrop

Just Blessed, thats all.

Some days you find yourself surrounded by chaos and other days it is different.
Today started badly for me, as the alarm just did not wake me up.
Leaving my cosy warm bed and my even cozier doggie seemed more difficult than usual.
Oh how I love my Mr. Fluffy-pajamas.

Got my early morning caffiene with a shot of hot chocolate, after twice punching in the wrong code then the wrong account. Looking at the drive through clerk I told her I would drive through again and sort it out so as not to hold up the line.

I did actually make it to my first appointment on time and prepared. It was a regular Mrs. Fuss-budget of mine', who has just lately decided that I might be all right after all. It took me 4 years to wear her down with my charms.
4 years and another client in the same building who told her that I was a rather nice person. Mrs. Fuss-budget told me this herself and added:
"I told her OF COURSE YOU ARE."
God only knows what she had said prior to prompt that conversation.

Today Mrs. F-B is regaling me with tales of her cars. She had an Austin, she had a Morris Minor, she had an Anglia, and a Colt and a Mini-Minor but it was a lemon and on and on.... A new car every two years.

I asked if her (late)husband drove her car.
"Oh no, nothing doing. He always drove a Jaguar."
(-of course he did. Silly me.)

We had some laughs after her driving stories and then I was off to ZeeZee's.
Pulling in to this million dollar driveway I always catch my breath, and just take in the view. She lives 20 feet from the high tide mark. The home is built in the shape of the letter *U*. The living room and dining room and master bedroom all have floor to ceiling windows two stories high. It is a stunning place to visit.
The street has grown up around her and the newer homes have gates and high powered alarm systems.

ZeeZee had the door standing open.
"I told you I would be up and ready!"

Usually we have to wake her up etc... but yesterday I made a point of telling her what time I would be ariving today. I wanted to see if she remembered.
Obviously so.

She is her brilliant best today, and I have such pleasure in her company it seems wrong that I am being paid for this. As I leave she says to me:
"Oh you don't know what it means to me you're coming. It is just such a blessing to me to have --you-- and I know I can't have --you-- all the time but I thank God for the days I can."

How humbling to be so loved today.

The love-in continued on most notably at the home of the wordsmith who is somewhat failing these days. There has been a change. He now repeats himself which is something that never before happened. This is not abnormal for a 98 yr old gentleman but it is sad in him.

We get the job done and he is regaling me with tales of his travels.
This is a very good visit. I now walk him out to his wife.
Leaving to tidy up my mess, and returning to say farewell, I have a little moment as I gaze his way to the chesterfield. He is wearing his jaunty little beret, looking just the artiste he is.

This man is Cary Grant + George Clooney + Jimmy Stewart.
Charming AND likeable without an ounce of deceit or licentiousness.

His wife smiles that I am laughing at the beret in delight and I am wishing aloud I had a camera in my pocket to take his picture. It is precious and priceless.

"Oh," she says, "Can you wait just a moment? I would like you to take a picture of he and I. We do not have a recent one."

She is in her 80s but looks 65. She does a wonderful job keeping him at home and he appreciates every moment of it.

So I do.

And now away....

She calls me back--

"He was so low this morning. I was worrying about how he would take whoever showed up. Thank you he is just 100% better. I am so glad it was you. You are a blessing."

She is a very lovely woman but not given to outbursts of gratitude nor flattery.
I am deeply touched.

------

Now what is it about today, what aura swirls around me this day that so reached my little clientelle?

Thank you, God, for a wonderful day.
It is not the flattery. It is the affirmation that I am doing what I should be.

Scheduling ?

-*-

One of my two imminently palliative clients passed away just after I left his home.
Inquiring about the other I was told he was now receiving service BID.

Today he was on my list and with much trepidation I pulled into the driveway.
It seemed unthinkable he could have made it to today in the shape he was in.
The last visit he was still conscious but so very weak that even sipping water was a difficulty. As I left he had said to me: "That was something. You pushed me hard."

Now I am going to the door and thinking to myself: "No way."

I sneak a peak through the window and the hospital bed is gone and the living room back to normal. The wife sees me peering in and now I am committed to action.
O no!

Luckily, I am locquacious. Thankfully, I have chutzpah.
There is always something nice to say.
Ok I said nice things. It was regrettable that I was sent there in error but perhaps it was a divine moment. A divine appointment.

Some little thing I said touched that woman and as I left she called me back for a close embrace and through tears thanked me (again).
..

..........0

Things Remembered, not all with relish --*

Dear sweet ZeeZee sits in her kitchen snoozling as the National sings out more woes.
Waking her up, somehow within moments she is talking about ballroom dancing
(" And I was very light on my feet too!")

Normally contemptive, ZeeZee is veering to obsession about remembered slights.
Apparantly she weighed over 300 pounds. ("None of it was real weight you know, it was just water a Doctor told me years later.") ("My husband never believed it. He always told me I had a sweet tooth and most be sneaking chocolates or cookies.")

Her husband had a grand position with a MultiNational company and part of his job was to entertain important clients. On the occasion she is remembering with such vividness it was a formal dinner/dance at a swish dinnerclub.

" I lived on the scent of bananas and lettuce leaves and got myself down to under 150 pounds. I looked very very good. So I went out and got myself an elegant black dress with layers of crepe and tulle. And I LOOKED MARVELLOUS! I wasn't just slim I was really slim."

Oh how intently she reminded me of this.
Imperitive that I know that she truly was slim.

The happy couple went out with another to aforesaid swish spot, and immediatly the band began to play, her gentelman husband swooshed the client's wife out onto the dance floor.

" And then, as that woman walked all over my husbands feet, and my toes started twitching, the husband leaned forward and engaged me in desultory conversation.

"I never did get to dance that evening but his wife was absolutely exhausted. On the way home I said to my husband in the car ' I never even got one dance out of him.'"

ZeeZee rolled her chair closer to me and stared into my eyes.

" And do you know what he said? He looked at me and said: ' Well dear, face it. No man wants to drag a heavy woman across the dancefloor.

" He never even noticed that I was no longer heavy, but you see he could no more change his nature than turn into a toad."

Poor dear ZeeZee sitting in her beautiful home reflecting on 90+ years of ZeeZee-ness and her primary memory of the man who was her beloved is that.

I am glad she lives on in the Waterfront mansion and he is feeding the worms.

An Echo and a Ripple

This last week I had the privilege to attend to a gentleman in his last days.
He is always an interesting man as he has kept his desire to interact even in these end times. I met him only a short few weeks ago when things were not going very well.
Thanks to good advice and better follow-up things are much better.

This day I come, he is bed-ridden in the living room. It is a good thing and he looks comfortable, although paler and thinner and I do not think there will be a next week for him. I give him a sip of water before he start to change things for him.

The woman floating in and out of the living room is familiar to me but I cannot quite get it. She was in the room a few weeks ago when I was here although I do not think that is where the memory is.

Just as I am finishing up, he looks up and says very loudly: "SHIT"

Well, by golly, it was not an expletive it was a descriptive.
I laughed out loud and he started singing: "Brown stuff brown stuff..

All right, perhaps a bit graphic for you or morbid but it was cute and funny and even his wife, usually so uptight laughed too.

So we cleaned up... again.

As I finished I was telling the wife she did not have to clean up for me... I can do it. But she did. The other familiar woman came over and said to me:
"I could never do your job. I don't know how you can do it and stay so calm and relaxed."

"Oh, you never know," I said, "I used to live in the big city and had a much different job until my own mother became terminally ill and I came here...

I looked at her.

"THATS WHERE I KNOW YOU FROM!""

She said to me: "You seem so familiar to me."

We took a hospice course together. All those years ago.
That course was the defining factor in my retraining.
Once I took it I knew I wanted to pursue palliative care.
For her, it was the other way. Once she took it she knew she had to move on.

I remember her well as her husband had early onset Alzheimers.
They were both active dynamic people. He was a health food, hiker,runner, holistic sort of fellow and it was a shock when he became unwell.

He was dead at 42.

So this is an echo and a ripple.
She looked great. She is remarried. And she is doing a very good job of helping her father in his last days.

Right on.

Rising Above Ailments

This is a wonderful post.

Right now my mind is on the many homeless of this big Island of ours. From Victoria to Comox we are in the throes of sub-freezing weather. Where do the street people sleep?

In Alberta a few decided to sleep in an abondoned bus.
It was a fatal decision. It was not the cold but propane fumes from their heater.

Somehow- - - - we in Paradise have to learn to share better.