by Tilda Shalof
“Oh.” Momentarily crestfallen, she quickly perks up and begins her story at the beginning. “I was born in 1933 in this very house. I was a librarian, then a secretary for thirty-six years at the community college. I walked three miles each way to work. Want to know why I retired? Computers. They did me in. My life’s big disappointment? My high school graduation was in 1951, but on commencement day the king died and the ceremony was cancelled. They rescheduled but that day was the queen’s coronation, so again it was cancelled. They ruined both my special days.” She looks put out and sounds peeved.
“At least I hope you made it to the prom,” I say gently.
“I’ve been a good girl. I never drank or smoked. And, in case you’re wondering, I never had a boyfriend, never got married, never had sex. Yes, I’m a virgin.” As I sit taking in that revelation, Audrey rushes to assure me. “I never missed any of it. My life has been without complications.”
“What do you do for fun?”
“Healthy living. My health is starting to fail, so I’m ready to go. I’m seventy-nine, so I must die this year. It’s September now, but on February 6th, 2013, I don’t want to read ‘eighty’ in my obituary.”
(Coincidentally, she shares a birthdate with Bob Marley. I recently saw a documentary on the legendary reggae musician. I wonder if I should inject that bit of trivia, but decide not. I can’t quite conjure up an image of Audrey jammin’, jammin’, jammin’.)
“My eyes and ears aren’t good,” she says. “I can’t walk well.”
“By my standards, you’re in pretty good shape.”
She watches me as I take notes. “Don’t describe me as weird, just wonderful.”
“May I use your real name, Audrey?”
She arches an eyebrow and gives me a perturbed look. “Whose name were you thinking of using?”
Good point.
Audrey leans back in the deep chair. “Well, now that I’ve met Nurse Tilda Sue, what more do I have to live for?”
Audrey is ready to die today; she’s written her eulogy and has even arranged for her cremation and made her funeral arrangements.
“I ordered a pink container from a catalogue. It’s ceramic but it won’t break because there’s a copper lining. I will weigh four pounds, the cremation guys told me. The hole is just waiting for me to fill it. Six thousand dollars includes getting you to the church and digging the hole. I’ve got a power of attorney for my personal care and one for my property. All I know is I don’t want to end up in your ICU.”
“Not many people are as prepared as you, Audrey. I’m impressed. And you seem to have no fear of death. Do you pray, Audrey? Does Jesus give you comfort?”
She gives a contented smile. “No, Nurse Tilda does.”
“That’s a lot to live up to, Audrey.”
Another of Audrey’s caregivers, Virginia, joins us in the living room. She’s from Chile and is apparently an exotic sight around here, as Audrey notes, “We don’t have many dark folk in this town.” Virginia pays no notice to her comment and tells me about another client who, at 103, “cooks, bakes, tends her garden. She told the office to stop sending a home care worker, but it’s good for her not to be left alone. Children these days are busy or don’t make the time. Neglect can kill.”
I ask Audrey about the gadget hanging from her neck on a string.
“I would have thought an experienced nurse like you would know all about it. It’s my lifeline. If I press this button, they all come running,” she says. “I used it only once. ‘What’s wrong?’ they asked. ‘My leg went on me,’ I told them. ‘I’ve fallen and can’t get up.’ ”
(Yes, those are her exact words.)
Around the table sits Team Audrey: Jean serves us her creamy homemade chicken à la king from a bone china tureen, using a sterling silver ladle, as you would expect from a refined lady whose cats are named “Tea” and “Crumpets.” Terry is a teacher from the local college who worked with Audrey. He’s brought over a music CD for me. It’s a collection of army songs that he has been researching. “The Korean War was the last war when soldiers sang songs that brought them closer as men. Today, soldiers are on their cellphones, talking to loved ones at home.” Next-door neighbour Ed tips his hat to me. Ed picks up Audrey’s mail, does her banking and grocery shopping, makes home repairs, cuts the grass, checks the furnace, and shovels the snow.
“Audrey, you’re an impresario,” I tell her. “You bring people together. You make things happen.”
“Yes, they do tend to flock ’round me like bees after honey.” She bats her eyes at me as if helpless at reigning in her irresistible magnetism.
This must be how life used to be, in the good old days. And it wasn’t just about casseroles. There were real connections, communities of neighbours who knew each other and were involved in each other’s lives. These days, every summer you hear on the radio, “It’s a scorcher today, a heat wave. Make sure to check on elderly or people living alone.” The members of Audrey’s close-knit entourage don’t need such prompts, nor do they need to be organized into shifts, or told what to do. They each show up and simply provide whatever is needed out of genuine care and concern for Audrey. We know it takes a village to raise a child, but it takes one to care for an elder, too. We all need to be part of a village.
At the end of the evening, Jean is the last to go. Audrey and I step out onto the porch to say goodbye. Audrey calls out to her, “Safe home!”
Jean calls back, “Nighty-night, Audrey. Safe home, Nurse Tilda.”
I don’t recognize the phrase and Audrey explains. “It’s an Ottawa Valley saying. It means get home safely.”
Before I go upstairs to bed, Audrey gives me a little china bell to use if I need anything during the night and want to call her.
“It’s nice for a nurse to have a call bell for a change. Ring all you want. I won’t hear a thing.”
At seven in the morning, Audrey calls me down to the kitchen. She wants to show me today’s vital signs (along with the last few months’ worth), recorded herself in that script I’ve become so familiar with from her letters. Her cursive strokes and loops are as precise and consistent as a computer-generated cursive font.
a.m. blood sugar 7.0
blood pressure 123/65
heart rate 72
temp. Nearly normal
“You see? The entire performance takes place here, at my kitchen table. Vital signs, eye drops, blood sugar. It’s also where I compose my epistles to you.”
Using her walker, she gets up and carefully makes her way over to a cupboard where she takes out a toy, plastic stethoscope. She places the bell on my chest and pretends to listen to my heart.
“How’m I doing?”
“Your ticker is right as rain,” she says. “As for you, you’re the cat’s meow.”
She injects insulin into her thigh, then heads to the avocado-green refrigerator to show me bowls of insulin syringes. They’ve already been prepared by Hilda and given colour-coded labels. “Red is my Novolog. That’s the fast-acting one. White is Humulin R. I take that before meals. Pink is NPH. I take that in the afternoon. I can just barely make out which is which.”
Hilda has arrived and is making pancakes and sausages for our breakfast. She leans close to whisper to me, “Audrey’s got selective vision. She says her eyesight is going, but I’ve seen her pick up a black thread off the navy blue carpet. I love her – I treat her like my grandmother – but boy, can she be stubborn.”
These observations, Audrey pretends not to hear. Selective hearing, too, perhaps? She knows I’m spying on her but I think she likes it.
As I’m packing up to go, Audrey announces, “I’ve got the perfect title for your little book.”
“Okay. Shoot.” I open my notebook and take out a pen.
“And She Said.” Audrey sits back, looking pleased.
“What does that mean?” I close my notebook.
“The book is about me, isn’t it?”
“No. You may be in it, but it�
��s about home care,” I remind her as delicately as possible.
“Oh.” Her mouth drops open, she looks crushed.
“I’m sorry, Audrey,” I rush to apologize.
“It’s nothing dear, it’s just that, well, I thought you were writing a book about me so that I can become as famous as thee.”
“I explained it to you on the phone and in my letter.” Last night, as well.
She sits up straight and looks away from me for a moment. “Here I thought you were a celebrity, but I see that you’re just an ordinary person.” She turns back. “Never mind. At least I had you here for a measly twenty-four hours. Now come back soon. Don’t dilly-dally. I don’t have forever, you know.”
Now that her cheery spirits have returned it seems like a good juncture at which to leave. I’m glad I came to see Audrey and her sweet, protected life. I have a feeling that not all seniors out there are as well cared for as Audrey at home in her rare and precious little world.
OASIS
I’M OUT HERE, back out on the road again, enjoying my freedom and this break from the hospital in my new role as roving nurse. After driving an hour from Kemptville, I arrive at VON’s Kingston office, where I meet the nurse manager Carol Cooke, who introduces me to Hazel, a volunteer who drives people to their dialysis treatments, waits for them, and gets them home.
“This isn’t a visit to the beauty salon,” Hazel says gruffly, like she means business. “It’s a life-saving procedure. Some of the people I drive are very sick.” Hazel describes herself as a “serial volunteer.”
“I’ve done it all – Beavers, Brownies, Girl Guides, the hospital auxiliary. Volunteering is in my blood. VON covers my gas, parking, wear and tear on my car. In a good week, I can put on as many as five hundred kilometres. And I’ve dealt with a few crises, too. One person, I took straight to the emergency department. You have to be brave to take this on. It’s like sitting by the emergency exit on an airplane, knowing you have to be the one to open the hatch in the event that the plane is going down.”
Carol drives me over to the Oasis, an apartment building of about ten floors that has been turned into an assisted-living residence. Seniors can live independently, in their own surroundings, but have access to various levels of assistance, as needed.
Doris and Henry have been married for seventy-two years and have lived at the Oasis in a one-bedroom apartment for the past few years. Doris has been looking forward to meeting me and is waiting in the basement lounge where there’s an old piano, a new computer, and lots of comfortable couches and rocking chairs, many draped with handmade afghans and quilts. She and Henry sit at a card table. Doris is quiet, but Henry is busy conversing animatedly with an old friend that only he can see.
“Here, I get a break from taking care of him,” Doris says, rolling her eyes. “I’m completely stressed out, at his beck and call, running hither and yon. Sometimes I wish I could end it, both him and me. Me, especially, I can’t take it anymore.” I believe her, yet her words are strikingly at odds with her composed presence and prim appearance in a periwinkle-blue cardigan over a lacy white blouse with a cameo brooch at the neck, her pink lipstick, and perfectly coiffed hairdo.
“How long have you been Henry’s caregiver?
“Fifty-four years! Ever since I married him. He’s a man, right? Today he’s angry because they took away his driving licence.” Henry does look very agitated.
“Theytookitawayfrommetookitawayfrommetookitaway …”
“When did that happen?” I ask him, but Doris answers.
“Seven years ago, but for him, it’s like yesterday. The last time he drove he went through a set of red lights. When I politely pointed that out, he asked me, ‘I’m driving?’ ”
“Do you think you would be safe to drive?” I ask Henry.
“I can drive. Whynotwhynotwhynotwhynotwhynotwhynot …”
Doris shakes her head. “Thank God he’s not on the road,” she mutters. “Can you imagine? I envy friends whose husbands are gone.” She takes a starched handkerchief from her purse and wipes drool from the corner of Henry’s mouth.
She speaks so openly in front of him that she must believe he doesn’t understand her, or perhaps doesn’t care if he does.
“So, tell me what’s stressing you now, Doris.”
She shoots me a withering glance. “What annoying questions you ask.” Despite her exasperation, she humours me with an answer. “Can’t you see he’s completely daft? Didn’t you notice how he says the same things over and over?” Her glare is piercing; she can’t understand why I don’t get it. “Not only that, but he thinks I’m poisoning the food and spending all his money.” She rolls her eyes at him. “As if he had any. Sometimes, he gets aggressive with me.” She stops short and doesn’t want to talk more about that. “I’m run ragged from morning until night taking care of him. I have to empty his urine bag. I dress him, feed him, bathe him, shave him. Who do you think cleans him up? I have no time to kick up my heels. I never get to go anywhere nice.”
Annoyed with my questions, Doris gets up in a huff and walks off, thus signalling an end to our conversation. I look around at the other residents sitting in the room, to see whom I can speak with next. At that moment, out of nowhere, a group of noisily exuberant women, dressed in red hats and purple scarves, marches into the communal room singing, clapping, and stomping. “When you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands … stomp your feet.” At the end, they give a cheerleader’s shout: “Watch out, dementia is catching.”
It feels like I’m in an episode of the old sitcom Golden Girls. Meanwhile, more Oasis residents have gathered, eagerly waiting to meet me and tell me their life story.
Sam pushes forward in order to be next. “Welcome to our hangout,” he says, waving around at the room. “The Oasis is a great place. We all look after each other. There’s a ninety-nine-year-old resident who’s being looked after by her sixty-year-old son who has dementia and cataracts. The mother is doing better than the son, but we make sure to check in on both of them throughout the day. There’s lots of staff available to help you with whatever you need, whenever you need it. We have a monthly bowling outing and a weekly movie night, but we have to be careful which movies we show because of …” He looks over at a sweetly smiling, white-haired woman sitting on an over-stuffed recliner with her feet resting on a low stool, a pink crocheted afghan smoothed over her lap. Her seat has been positioned in the centre of the room, so that everyone has to pass by or walk around her. “That’s Gwyneth Patterson,” Sam says of the woman they protect from risqué movies. “She’s ninety-seven and a born-again Christian. A holy roller. We don’t want to shock her.” Gwyneth smiles at me serenely.
“Yup, this room is well-used and used well.” Sam seems to be the self-appointed Oasis social convener. “We have parties, play euchre, meet friends. There are more women than men, so I have my pick. I’m quite the lady’s man.” Sam leans back in his spaghetti sauce–stained black T-shirt pulled taut over his belly and baggy grey sweatpants. “Yup, you never stop looking, even at our age. But I like to play the field. All the guys here do. There’s lots of romances going on. Yup, lots of reasons to get up and get dressed in the morning.”
I note that Gwyneth keeps her eye on me, watching my every move as I work my way around the room, conducting my interviews. Ruth, who’s been waiting to tell me her story, sits patiently beside Gwyneth, who’s observing the passing parade in front of her.
“For twelve years, I cared for my husband at home,” Ruth says. “But then he became violent, and I had to put him into a psychiatric facility. Since I’ve been here, I’ve lost a hundred pounds. I’d gotten up to three hundred taking care of my husband. It didn’t bother me to care for him. He would have done the same for me. But now, it’s my time. I’m knitting, sewing, doing macramé, and collecting butterflies. My husband used to call me his butterfly. Oh, I love to sew dolls, arrange flowers, make things beautiful – which reminds me, summer’s over. Time to bring out the fall de
corations. I’m in charge of decor. I’ll take down the butterflies and put out lots of gold, red, orange. Butterflies are free, they say.”
“Butterflies are an omen for me, too,” Gwyneth says. “A butterfly landed on the back of my hand. It opened its wings and circled around me. It was a sign from God.”
A woman hands me a paper that says, “My Life Story As I See It, by Mary Becker.” (“You can put it in your book but only if you use my real name,” she instructs me.)
“I write a weekly Newsletter here at Oasis. I AM Communications. I have no hearing. It all began with Alma, my domineering mother who always had to be Right and Jane an Older sister who got All the attention. Everything Alma or Jane said, I defied in WORDS. I let them know. I EXIST!”
Mary worked in public relations for the College of Nurses of Ontario. “If there was a legal situation involving a nurse – let’s say the headline reads, ‘Nurse Tilda May Have Accidentally Murdered a Patient’ – I would check the records and prepare briefing sheets for the directors. I have always worked with words,” her story concludes.
Gwyneth nudges the footstool to invite me over. I sit on it at her feet.
“I went through the water like Christ. I was brought up in the church, lived my life in the church. I am a Baptist, born in Wales, married a Canadian soldier in the war. I made my own wedding cake and can make Welsh rarebit, haggis, and more.” She smiles and clasps her hands together. “God talks to me. To him I will go one day. I am His. I am not afraid to die. I know I’ll be sitting at Jesus’s feet.”
There’s a poke on my shoulder. “I’m Alton.” A short, seemingly timid man boldly motions me to come to him next. “I’m the new kid on the block. I’ve been here only two years, but I know everyone. When the ambulance takes one of us away, none of us like it. One lady had to go to the hospital, but she came back. When another lady got short of breath, we helped her put on her shoes, got her purse, and called the ambulance. I had her key, so I did her dishes.”
