In the Shadow of the Valley: A Memoir

by Bobi Conn

  CHAPTER 35

  That Would Be Good

  One night, I dreamt that my granny was lying on her couch and I was sitting beside her, and I knew in my dream that she was dying. It was the couch in her living room, where she napped after fixing me Sunday supper for the first twelve years of my life. Where her school picture hung, forever portraying her as a seven-year-old girl with blond hair and serious eyes. An aerial photograph of their house hung above the couch, showing the gardens, the root cellar, the henhouse, the creek that flowed down the field behind their house and met up with Mill Branch. It captured the home and the land at its best—tranquil, well kept.

  When I woke up from my dream, I called Granny—I was certain that it was an omen, a sign from whoever’s in charge of signs these days. Without telling her my dream, I asked how she was doing and tried to pry beneath her standard very well response. She had had a kidney infection, she said, but the doctor gave her some medicine, and she thought it was almost gone. She was supposed to go to the hospital in Lexington to have a pacemaker inserted, but she didn’t have a ride and would probably cancel her appointment.

  What? What do you mean, you don’t have a ride? I asked. Granny explained that my dad couldn’t take her; he either didn’t have a car or had something else to do—and besides, his driving scared her too much anyway. Her other son could not take her—he was in prison by this time, serving a forty-eight-year sentence for murder. Her daughter could not take her—she did not drive. And none of her other relatives could do it—none of her grandchildren, nieces, nephews, brothers, sisters-in-law—nobody. So she would have to cancel, she said.

  By this time, I was teaching part time at a university, had given birth to a girl, and was again a single mother. I told Granny I would take her to her appointment, though it meant I would have to cancel a class I was teaching that day and, to get Granny to Lexington by eight in the morning, I would have to find child care for my one-year-old daughter so that I could leave my house by five thirty. Then I would need to take my daughter home until Granny was ready to go back to Morehead, when I would pick up Granny in Lexington and make the drive eastward once again, then southwest an hour and a half back to my house. She said it was too much, and I told her it was not enough—I could never begin to match the giving she had done in my life, but I could try.

  So I did, and right away I was late arriving at her house, getting her to her appointment late. She was not allowed to eat prior to the procedure, so by the time they got around to taking her in, it was almost noon, and she was feeling out of sorts. She wanted me to go back with her and I did, sitting beside her in a chair while she lay on the hospital bed. This was going to be a relatively easy procedure, with the insertion going through her shoulder to place the pacemaker next to her heart. She told me she was scared, though, and I held her hand as we waited there. I told her that God loved her so much and would take care of her—offering her the same words she had given me so many times. I was allowed to stay until right before the procedure, and the nurses asked all their questions of her with me in the room.

  At one point, a nurse asked her whether she had any other pains or problems, and she said no. When the nurse left, she told me that she actually did have a pain in her abdomen and that it had been there since around Christmas. She was afraid that if they knew, they might not give her the pacemaker. I convinced her to tell the nurse anyway, just in case, and when the nurse came back, she did. The nurse asked about her bowel movements and talked about stool softeners while I sat in my chair, silent but irritated at the medical field’s pill-based model of care. But she did suggest that they do a scan of her abdomen, after the pacemaker insertion, to see whether there was a blockage, and Granny was happy with that.

  I assured her that I would be in the waiting room for as long as possible while she had her procedure done and that, if I had to go, I would come back soon. I ended up leaving to get my daughter for a while, but then returned in the evening, after I called and they said she was awake. It was getting dark—past five in the evening, and she still had not eaten. When I arrived, she was angry with the nurses, who refused to bring her food until the doctor approved. I asked the various nurses, and they offered no solution, so finally, after almost twenty-four hours of not eating, my granny told me to go to the cafeteria and get her a hamburger. I didn’t know what was worse—her continuing to go without food or eating a hamburger—but she was getting madder than a wet hen, so I got the food and brought it back. She was able to eat almost half of the burger and a few of the french fries but then said she had just gone too long without food, and we threw the rest away. She spent the night there, alone.

  One of our other relatives—Granny’s sister-in-law—picked her up the next day and took her home. When I called to check on her, she said that the pacemaker had made her feel really good the first couple of times it shocked her heart into beating faster, but it had started shocking her almost constantly, and it was wearing her down. She would soon be going to get it removed.

  She went back to Lexington, and the heart specialist told her that one of her valves needed to be replaced, that it was too weak and wasn’t efficiently pumping oxygenated blood in and used blood out. He explained it all in front of me, talking about the pig’s valve that they would be using to replace her valve, how it was so much like a human valve and her body would take right to it. They were concerned, though, that her heart could be distressed by the surgery, and it might be too much. But, he said, it would most likely be fine, and she would feel like she was twenty years old again after the surgery.

  You could see the doubt in her face as she looked down and said in her simple way, Well, that would be good.

  They scheduled the heart-valve replacement close to Thanksgiving, and I wondered how Thanksgiving would be if Granny had not recovered enough by then to cook her usual feast. A lot of our relatives showed up at the hospital this time, and I wanted to stay away until she woke up. But my papaw convinced me that I needed to come up and try to be there when she awoke—it would mean so much to her, he said. My dad was there, wearing the nicest clothes he had. As soon as I walked into the waiting room, he came over to me and started talking about our relatives, how they looked down on him and were too good to talk to him. All those relatives oohed and aahed over my daughter, whom I had brought with me. I also brought food for my papaw and father, and they ate there in the waiting room while I tried to chat with relatives I had not seen in years.

  I was glad to see so many people there for her—even my father. I knew that, in some way, she had cared for them all and had likely provided for each of them at some point. Who knows what all had passed between her and these other elders of mine, people whose wisdom I never heard but whom I can love because they loved her.

  When I was little, my mother and my favorite cousin both called me selfish at different times. I didn’t know why they thought that, and it hurt to hear it from them. I had always tried to show them that I deserved their love, that I would be good to them. Now I can see that when we are struggling to survive, a lot of things look selfish from the outside—we cling to the things that we believe are keeping us alive, and there is often no logic to that. At age seven or twelve, I couldn’t have known better even if I tried—I couldn’t have removed myself from my own experience, seen the need and want in another’s life. Being called selfish at such a young age prepared me to hear it later in romantic relationships, where I dared to voice an opinion.

  But I somehow knew my granny didn’t worry about the selfishness in me. I think she saw, but didn’t dwell on, the envy I felt for Junior. I didn’t feel like she noticed my rotting teeth or my dirty hair or my clothes turned brown from the creek water we washed them in. When I was with her, I felt like she saw me without trying. Like she understood me without me pleading my case before her, working so hard to show her how much I deserved to be loved. She loved me before I understood that I deserved it, and I was grateful without understanding why.

  T
here was a peace between us, the kind of peace that could make a person believe in God. It was a connection not with the previous generation, still reeling from their own traumas and doubts, but with a generation who had tried to love and who had been imperfect, who had lost, who had kept going for whatever good they could find.

  And maybe she saw something of herself in me, though I hope she never felt the way I did. Maybe she just knew that she could pass along to me the simple joys of a simple life. Maybe it was something about how I knelt at the altar next to her, so scared of everything except being next to her and knowing that whatever we were praying for, we were praying together. Maybe that’s just part of being a grandparent—giving this unconditional love that no one else can give, with a value that can’t be understood.

  I couldn’t tell those people at the hospital any of this. I responded to their questions about my job and my children. I tried to smile when it was called for. None of that mattered as I watched my daughter, making sure she never touched the floor, making sure each person that held her was good.

  CHAPTER 36

  Patron Saints

  When I was finally allowed to visit Granny in the intensive care unit, I thought at first that they had taken me to the wrong room. With the door and curtains wide open, my granny lay there, her mouth forced open by the tube that went down into her stomach. IVs tangled in and around her body. Her face was whiter than any face I had ever seen, and they had taken her false teeth out, so her cheeks were sunken. I started crying as the nurses came in and out, checking machines and injecting more drugs into her system.

  I asked one nurse whether I could put a medallion on her—a Catholic medallion bearing the face of St. Jude on one side and St. Raphael on the other. I had been collecting medallions for years, finding them in antique and junk stores, then cleaning them up so I could read the names and prayers inscribed on them. When I found the first one I ever bought, I was immediately drawn to it. I paid two dollars, and when I examined it later, I found it was dated 1880. The print was tiny, but I used a magnifying glass to see that it bore two pictures with an inscription around each; the medallion itself was no more than a half inch in diameter. From then on, I bought them every chance I got, then began wearing them occasionally, on any necklaces I could string them onto.

  I wore St. Jude and St. Raphael for about a year when I thought to look up the saints and see what they guard over. St. Jude, I found, is the patron saint of desperation and hopeless causes. St. Raphael is the patron saint of healing. When I found that out, I was struck by the irony—I had for so long felt like a hopeless cause, yet during that time I had tried using drugs and herbs and therapy to help me in some way—in any way.

  I liked the idea of finding these old medallions, of them being infused with prayers and hopes and faith from all the people who had worn them or held them while praying or, like me, who had touched them unconsciously when uncertain and needing assurance. I thought that, no matter what else, the saintly medallions represented hope, and surely all of us praying and hoping and loving together could amount to something.

  The nurse taped my medallion onto Granny’s nightgown, and I left a Bible in there for her to see whenever she opened her eyes. A couple of days later, when she came to and was able to speak once again, I looked for her medallion and could not find it. It was gone, perhaps lost in the laundry or pocketed by whoever had changed her nightgown. Her wedding ring, her watch, and a spoon ring she had worn into the hospital also disappeared forever, after the nurse who prepped her for surgery placed them in a baggie and walked away as Granny was wheeled into the operating room. Though I called the hospital and spoke with nurses, supervisors, and even the company that washed the hospital’s linens, I could never track down any of Granny’s belongings.

  When the doctor came to update the family, I was shocked to hear him say that he was surprised Granny made it through the surgery—he honestly had not expected her to live. Her heart was stronger than he had thought, and she should be feeling good before long, he promised. Her new valve would now be pumping fresh blood into her heart as the old one had not been for probably twenty years. He said she should have had the surgery many years ago, when she was stronger, but she had been afraid to have it done and put it off for so long. Her recovery would take longer, but she would have a higher quality of life from then on.

  And then they did the scan of her abdomen.

  The place in her side had been hurting for a year by this point. Thanksgiving passed, and she could hardly eat. Christmas came, and she was in pain. The scan showed a mass in her abdomen, and a rush of hospitalizations, tests, and delays ensued. I was driving to Lexington every other day, teaching classes at the university and a community college, attempting to stitch together a livable income, and trying to be a comfort to Granny. I would bring milkshakes for Papaw, who could hardly eat because of the myasthenia gravis and Parkinson’s that had ravaged his body for almost a decade. I offered to read the Bible to Granny, or bring her food. The mass kept growing, and her stomach began to visibly swell. The larger it got, the angrier I grew.

  I was angry with the hospital staff, who would one day send her fried chicken or soup beans and corn bread to eat, food that she could hardly touch, and the next day would have her on a liquid diet of Jell-O and iced tea—nothing to nourish and strengthen her. I was angry with my father, who would call me and tell me I needed to be there, Go see your granny as much as you can, she won’t be in this world much longer, I wish I could be there, but she thinks the world of you and you’ve got to be there for her, and I thought, Yes, I fucking know this already, but I am tired of being the only one of us who thinks she is worth being here for, and I don’t want to watch her die, and I don’t know what’s happening in her body but it’s scaring me, and there’s no one left to make me feel like everything might be okay.

  But I just said, Yes, I’m doing my best, and I did my best, even when she wanted me to change her underwear for her, and I had to clean her like I had cleaned babies but never an adult, and I did not know whether her pride was hurt, or whether she was embarrassed like I was, or whether she could see the fear in my face, or whether she had just reached the point where such things don’t matter anymore, where they fall away and what is left is the simple matter of being a human, having a body, and tending to it the best one can, knowing it has reached the end of its usefulness. I did my best when she wanted me to cut her fingernails that were long and yellowed, and beneath them was an unknown substance that was suddenly on my hands, and I was afraid something dirty was going to take over my body forever.

  I did my best when she wanted me to lower her onto the bedside toilet, and she did not want me to call the nurses but to be there with her as she tried to shit, and nothing happened that needed to happen, nothing was working like she needed it to work. And I brought her watermelon one day, and she said, This will probably be the last time I ever eat watermelon, and I remembered eating watermelon at a picnic table outside her house so many times. And it seemed that bringing her that watermelon was the best thing I could have done, the only adequate expression I had while all the words stayed inside me, unspoken.

  The nurses would not comment on her condition, and she was moved from one floor to another, then one wing to another. Finally, a doctor stood in her room, and I was there, and the doctor said, It is cancer, and Granny cried. The doctor told us the name of the cancer and ran through the short list of options: surgery was out because her heart wasn’t strong enough; radiation might shrink it for a while, but the doctor was not sure whether Granny was strong enough for that; or, she suggested, You could go home, and we can make you really comfortable while you enjoy the rest of your time with your loved ones. I asked what she meant by really comfortable, and someone explained that Granny could have lots of pain medicine. No pain—wouldn’t that be nice. Forty years of watching her son kill himself with pain medicine, losing her young grandson to pain medicine, another grandson in prison for pain medicine. There’s
no way, I thought, I could watch my granny spend the rest of her life in a fog of pain medicine, doped and delusional and absent. No.

  Granny was discharged and went to the radiation clinic in Morehead. When she got there, they told her she was not strong enough to withstand the side effects, and they sent her home. In the end, though, the doctors did not make her really comfortable with a slew of pain medicines, and she was not able to die in her home, surrounded by loved ones, as I had always thought she would. They had her set up with a hospital bed in her house, but my papaw was the only person there to help her to the bathroom and back to the bed, to wash her, to bring her food and medicine—and before long, she was in the local hospital.

  I called to check on her and found out she had been there for a couple of days—nobody called to tell me she was going, and I drove to the hospital right away, wondering how it was that no one in my family thought to communicate such basic information. When I got there, I found Granny in a quiet, dark room with flowers all around her. The nurses looked at me with sympathetic smiles as I went up there, and one of them finally said that she was dying.

  Oh, I’m so glad you’re here, Granny said when she came to. I was sitting beside her, not wanting to wake her but wanting her to feel my presence. We spoke for a few minutes, but she needed the quiet and had me shush my papaw and someone he was speaking with at the door. While we were talking, I asked her what she wanted me to do with the pictures I had taken from her house, the ones she lent me to make copies of but which I hadn’t yet copied. Keep them, she said, so they don’t get lost. I want you to have my curio cabinet, she said.