Category: Uncategorized

Joining the Sisterhood

A heartbeat or the lack of one can change your life, forever.  It’s been three years and almost three months since it changed mine.  Larry (he was 78 years old) and I were in the ICU at Swedish Hospital.  He had been there for a day.  After his monthly chemo at the oncologist’s office, he had a problem with being cold – freezing, he said – to the point that the nurses brought out warm blankets.  The blankets helped some, but he was immediately transported to the ICU at Swedish.

When I arrived at the ICU, there was an argument going on with Larry at the center of it.  A nurse told me that he was refusing – very vocally  – to wear the oxygen mask, even though, at home, he slept with a CPAP mask on every night.  “His oxygen levels are too low,” she said.  I asked them to wait just a moment while I put down my things, and then, I turned on him.  I told him that he was not going to be mean to his caregivers – he was being mean to them.  I told him that they were following the doctor’s orders and both he and they would be in trouble if he continued to refuse to wear the mask.  “So,” I said, “you will put on this mask as you are being asked to do.”  He put on the mask.

Have you lost something?  Did it just “disappear?”  That happened to me, today.  I knew that it had to be in the house, but where?  I looked and looked and just couldn’t find it.

The “thing” I was looking for is my “help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” device.  Today, following my usual routine, I woke at the usual time, dressed, washed my face and hair, ate my breakfast, and put all of the things into my pants pockets (shorts, these days).  I usually wear a watch pinned to my tee shirt but because its battery is shot, I haven’t been wearing it.  It was part way through the morning that I realized I had not pinned my emergency alert unit to my pants pocket and I began, somewhat frantically, to search for it.  Everywhere.  Even in places where I knew it could not possibly be.  I figured  it would be expensive to replace.  So, the looking didn’t stop for a long time.  Then, I gave up.

I wear an emergency button everyday.  I call this thing my “help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” device.  Keith, my neighbor, bullied me until I decided he was right.  Like his mother who has one of these devices, I live alone and Keith thought I should get one.  And his wife Rita concurred.  So, I gave in and purchased the devices and the plan, and when they came, I reviewed all of the pieces and parts:  a red button to keep in the bathroom, a little one-inch button to wear around my neck in the house, and a larger unit with a button that has a GPS in it.

Right away, I decided that the house button is not for me.  If I wear the house button while at home, the receiver for the part that I have to talk to when there is an emergency is always in another part of the house plugged into the wall socket.  When I leave the house, I have to change it for the GPS unit and I forget.  So, there I am in the car with the house button, not the GPS unit.  That’s why I only use the GPS unit, at home in the house or the yard or on the go.  The company isn’t very happy about that, but that’s their problem¸ not mine.  It works for me.

The last lesson of the workshop I talked about in the last post was about finding beauty in the flowers and plants as they faded from their glory of the summer.  Sometimes, it is difficult to believe that the dying flowers and plants can have any beauty.  But, some do.  The image I’ve included with this week’s post shows a yellow Missouri primrose in full bloom and what happens as the bloom begins to fade.  You can see that it changes from the cupped yellow blossom to the spiraling look of a candle flame.  Even the colors changed from pure yellow to red and orange!  This candle shape is as beautiful to me as the newly blooming blossom.

Until Judith’s workshop directed students to really look at the fading flowers in this new way, I simply deadheaded those faded primrose flowers and threw them away.  Looking at our environment in new ways is revealing.  Really revealing.

Outside the flowers are fading; but that’s for another article.  Right now, the flowers are glorious.  Sunflowers.  Cone flowers.  Hollyhock.  Yellow Missouri primrose.

I recently took a virtual workshop with one of the best teachers and mentors I’ve ever met, with whom I’ve worked for years.  And, I know these things because as a supervising educator (school director at one of the two Colorado state hospitals, school superintendent of a district on Colorado’s eastern plains), it was my job to evaluate the educators who worked in those places.  Judith’s workshop, this time, was about looking outside to find special things in our environment.  She usually teaches this class in Crested Butte, Colorado, but, of course, with the pandemic, it has become a virtual class.  So, out into our yards, parks, alleyways, and roadsides, we went searching for anything to catch our eye and sketch.  We were promised that by the end of the workshop, we would have a journal filled with wonderful images.  And, writing.

            You are reading a first post of a blog by an 82-year-old woman who has never completed a blog before.  In fact, until Karl, one of my computer gurus, mentioned it to me, I never had a thought about publishing a blog.  After asking some friends and relatives for their thoughts about me writing a blog and receiving several “you go girl” responses, I decided to take Karl up on his suggestion.  So, bear with me while I develop my “sea legs” for this activity.

            You should be told something about the person whose work you are reading.  For sixty years, I was married to and lived with one of the best man human beings that has ever walked the earth until his life was taken as a result of being a uranium worker to make money to pay for our college education.  You will hear about Larry a lot, I think.  You will also hear about my daughters (two, H&J), my son-in-law (one, B), granddaughters (two-R&L), as well as my neighbors and other friends that I have been blessed to have in my life.  I consider my life is enriched by all of them.