A Bittersweet Goodnight

by Linda C Wright

  “Doctor, she smoked since she was fifteen years old. She never had a cigarette she didn’t enjoy,” I answered trying to keep the edge off my voice. “No, I don’t want to treat it. She’s ninety three.” Her age alone was enough justification to make that decision.

  “I understand. Please call me if you have any other questions,” he politely answered before disconnecting the call.

  The workday plodded along with the conversation with the doctor running over and over in my head. I still hadn’t come to terms with whether or not I had made the right decisions. Everyone must look at me like a murderer. The Hippocratic Oath that every doctor has taken says they will treat the patient to the best of their ability and judgment. Nowhere in the oath does it say anything about helping an old, sick patient to die. They don’t want to make those decisions either, so they are leaving them to my emotional and confused heart.

  Driving home after work my phone rang again.

  “Is this Linda Wright?” a voice asked.

  “Yes.” I answered.

  My name is Sandy. I’m June Wright’s nurse at West Boca Medical Center,” she paused. “June would like to speak to you.”

  The next sound I heard rattled me so hard I barely missed driving off the road.

  “Liiiinddddaaa! Where are you?” June yelled.

  “June. I’m at work.” I lied.

  “Okay,” she replied in a normal tone of voice.

  “How are you feeling today?” I asked.

  “I’ve been better. Why don’t you come to see me?” The sharp edge of her words started to return.

  “June, I go to work every day.” I learned during our journey through dementia and old age that on some level she still understood it was necessary for me to work. She didn’t ever argue with me when I mentioned work. She’d been an independent woman even after she married Dad.

  “I need you. I need you to talk to,” she whined.

  “You have to concentrate on getting better. I’ll come down and see you next weekend,” I said.

  My father taught me the Golden Rule, Do Unto Others as You Would Have Others Do Unto You. All these lies I had to tell went against everything I’d been raised to be. A jolt ran up my spine each time I spoke an untruth to pacify June. This time tears ran freely down my face.

  The nurse got back on the phone. June wailed unintelligible thoughts in the background.

  “I know how hard this is,” she offered some compassion to me.

  “I wish I knew what to do for her. Thank you for taking care of her,” I said.

  “She’s a sweet lady. She’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

  Unable to stop the tears of frustration before I pulled into the garage, Richard stared at me when I came through the door.

  “I just got off the phone with June” I said.

  “What did she want?” Richard asked as he flipped a piece of fish in the fry pan cooking on the stove.

  “She screamed at me and wanted to know where I was,” I said, tears beginning to run down my cheeks again. “You know how she says ‘Linda’ when she’s really angry at me.”

  Richard had known her for over twenty-five years and broke out into a fit of laughter when I imitated the screech of her voice. I couldn’t help but join him in laughing at how ridiculous our conversation became when repeated in a made up version of June’s hoarse voice. I found myself in another one of those laugh or cry moments. If I didn’t laugh, I’d cry until I ran out of tears.

  “We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I periodically sent an information update on June to Susan since she was the only one of my sisters involved in any way in what was happening with our stepmother. The few days after receiving one of my frustrating messages, Susan called me. I was still getting used to that. We weren’t the sisters to call each other up just to talk, ever. Suddenly I had both her cell phone and her unlisted home phone saved in speed dial. It took some getting used to her schedule. If I called before nine in the morning, Greg answered since Susan was still sleeping. My day started at six thirty a.m., rain or shine, seven days a week. I couldn’t make sense of a seventy-year-old woman still having teenage sleeping habits.

  She and Greg had been to visit June. They own a winter home in Naples and made the two hour trip across Alligator Alley to see her for a couple hours. Sometimes if I knew they were making a visit, I asked them to take her something she needed. This time June had been in the nursing home for close to two months and wasn’t making any forward progress with her hip.

  “June said to tell Linda not to sign her up for any more classes. She doesn’t want to go,” Susan said.

  “Classes? What classes?” I asked. What came to mind was the room full of sleeping seniors at book club, Richard and I witnessed on our scouting trip to the nursing home.

  “I think it’s the physical therapy. She was coming back to her room when we got there.” Susan said.

  “Is she walking?” I asked

  “No. Obviously, she’s not paying attention in class,” Susan joked.

  “Obviously she’s not,” I laughed too.

  The next day I called and asked to speak with the physical therapist. Lisa greeted me cheerfully.

  “How is June Wright doing with her physical therapy?” I asked.

  “June is still not able to stand for more than a few seconds,” she said. “We’ve been working with her but she’s very weak.”

  “Do you think she will be able to stand or walk again?” I asked.

  Lisa hesitated for a minute and then carefully chose her words.

  “I’m not confident therapy is helping her any longer,” she said.

  Right then I heard June’s message. Cancel class. She would happily take the F on her report card.

  My next call was to Sherry, the nursing home administrator.

  “Sherry, I want June placed in hospice care.” I’d been thinking about doing this for some time. June didn’t have the strength or the energy to keep fighting and hadn’t for a long time. She knew I was the one in charge of her life. June hadn’t forgotten me and the job she had given me, or the job my father had given me on her behalf.

  “She still has thirty two more days of care paid for by Medicare,” Sherry responded. “We ordered her a knee brace to see if that would help with her leg strength. Her left knee is twisted in, you know.”

  Sherry’s job was to keep the bed occupied and the bill paid. As long as she could keep Medicare paying, she was going to do it. The two of us had butted heads before over June. Sherry had a commanding attitude and I believe she thought she could get away with something like this since I wasn’t nearby and hadn’t done any pop in visits lately.

  “Sherry, why didn’t you consult me before you spent the government’s money on a brace for her? Her knee has been like that for close to forty years. That’s not what’s preventing her from standing.”

  “A brace is the protocol once the standard care options have been exhausted.” She had an answer for everything.

  “I want her put on hospice care as soon as possible,” I demanded. I knew hospice would not bring an immediate end to June’s life, but it would stop unnecessary therapy and exhausting visits to doctor’s offices. It may give her some emotional support to move more gently toward the end of her life.

  “That means she’ll go on self pay. Medicare is still paying so she needs to continue the therapy until that time is exhausted.”

  “I spoke to Lisa and the therapy isn’t helping. I want her on hospice as soon as possible. What do I need to do to make that happen?” I was losing my patience.

  “I want to see June’s financial statement. We do not accept Medicaid at this facility,” she replied.

  Here we go again. It’s all about the money. I should know that by now.

 
I faxed June’s most recent bank statement showing she had approximately two hundred thousand dollars left since the sale of her condominium and a long term care policy that paid $120 a day toward her care. June was one of the lucky ones. She had a financial cushion to keep her comfortable, at least for a while.

  Sherry approved June to stay within minutes.

  I read a statistic 59% of assisted living residents eventually move to a skilled nursing facility. I can add June to that list. The average stay in a nursing home is 835 days or 27.8 months. Sherry is charging me $8,000 a month for June’s bed times 27.8 months means according to the statistics June has enough money to last.

  Popping into my head, I saw June’s red and scrunched up face. She begged me not to move her to a facility. I wish I could find another word for ‘facility’ because June called every place that interred old people a facility. The word painted a picture of a long sterile corridor where the walls are covered in gleaming stainless steel. A person is wheeled in one end before the doors lock tight behind them and are pushed out the other end in a body bag. What happens in between is anyone’s guess. I’ve not been able to find a suitable substitute for the word facility. That’s where she was and where she was going to stay. June knew more than I gave her credit for.

  “Will my family forgive me for not leaving them any money?” she cried to me shortly after she moved into assisted living.

  “You saved your money to take care of yourself. They’ll forgive you.” I did my best to pacify her.

  My father had a saying as he spent his last nickel; they’d be nailing his coffin shut. His children had no expectation of money falling into their pockets because he had died. And it didn’t. I wasn’t part of the family June worried about. The mysterious niece and nephews lurked in the background never appearing in the flesh, only lying in wait to see how big the check would be.

  “It’s not the cough that carries you off. It’s the coffin they carry you off in.”

  - Old family saying

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “Pastor Gordon called today,” Richard announced when I got home one afternoon.

  “Who’s he?” I asked.

  “He’s from hospice. He went to see June today.”

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “He wants to speak to you. Does June have a prepaid funeral plan?” Richard asked.

  “I don’t think so. I’ll go look in her book,” I said.

  I referred to June’s trusty book I bought her years ago, many times. I didn’t always find what I was looking for but sometimes I got lucky. The page I located near the back of the book was titled ‘The Final Dress Rehearsal’. I don’t know why anyone would call a funeral a dress rehearsal. It’s the real thing, final, because the person who is the center of attention at a funeral is dead and gone. It’s the last party thrown in their honor.

  A person doesn’t get to lie down in their coffin, hold their breath and then listen to make sure their chosen death march is played in tune. When it’s over and the person sits up, scares the crap out of the mourners, they don’t get to walk into the funeral directors office and tweak what they didn’t like about the service so it can be improved for the real deal.

  I knew June didn’t want any kind of service but someone had to come haul her body away when the bittersweet goodnight arrived. She had written, “Advance arrangements have been made with Kraeer Funeral Home.” in the book. The address was listed along with a phone number. The next line was curious to me. “ Copy of vital statistics on file with them and also in steel box”. A document labeled as ‘vital statistics’ is either a birth certificate or a death certificate and June’s not dead yet. Why a funeral home would require a birth certificate left me wondering.

  The second part of my search started in her steel box, the one I had also brought home with me after I cleaned out her apartment. It contained another treasure trove of personal papers and notes that were able to instantly invoke sharp emotions. I’d been through this box many times, most of the papers old and no longer valid. This time I searched for her vital statistics, whatever that might be.

  The only thing I found with that specific title was my father’s death certificate. Kraeer Funeral home in Boca Raton handled his cremation and funeral. While June allowed me to make the life and death decision for my father, she took complete control of the funeral preparation.

  I drove her to the funeral home the day after we returned from Miami. I remember sitting in front of a tiny wood desk littered with papers talking to a very large man in a red jacket who was the funeral director. He loomed over us like the professional wrestler, Andre the Giant.

  June picked out the flowers, the minister and the room to rent, including the number of chairs she expected to fill for the service. The funeral director explained the burial at sea she requested for his ashes. Andre the Giant had convinced her Sunday was the best day for a funeral, people had nothing else to do on a Sunday afternoon, and she could expect a bigger turnout. The minister was available. His Lutheran congregation retired him a few years back. Andre entered the items they agreed upon on a form, adding up the prices and totaling the charges.

  “Mrs. Wright, the cost will be three thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars,” he said.

  June turned and looked at me. “I don’t have that much money. How am I going to pay for it?”

  “We’ll put it on your credit card and figure it out later,” I said. That’s how I handled my finances. I kept emergency funds out of everyday reach and would transfer the money when to bill came. I assumed my father would have done the same thing.

  Andre the Giant gasped. “I don’t want you to use your credit card. We’ll figure out a payment plan for you.”

  He didn’t want to take a credit card knowing he would add another three percent onto the balance to cover the credit card fee. A payment plan would be far more lucrative for him by collecting interest from June each and every month for two or three years. I was cynical about people’s money motives even back then and June was only sixty-nine years old at the time.

  “Oh wait,” she yelled out. “Your father gave me a check for my Christmas present. I can use that.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Mrs. Wright, I don’t want you to spend a Christmas present on a funeral,” Andre tilted his chin downward in an effort to show his compassionate side.

  I sure as hell hoped she had already cashed this check but I doubted it with all that had happened in the past week. For once, through all this I was glad it was the holidays. Hopefully the bank wouldn’t find out Dad was dead and freeze his accounts before June could negotiate the Christmas gift turned into funeral payment. We’d stop at the bank on the way home.

  June and Andre the Giant made arrangements to bring the check on Sunday before the service. He was kind enough to get everything ready and delay her payment since it was Christmas. He couldn’t have lain on any thicker how generous he was being by giving her this reprieve and June fell for it hook line and sinker.

  Not finding anything from the funeral home for her own funeral, I called the number in her book. Twenty-five years later, Kraeer Funeral Homes had been sold to a big company that had snapped up little mom and pop undertakers who were drowning in today’s economy. The large welcoming two-story white clapboard house with green shutters that had stood on the corner of a busy intersection of Glades Road and US 1, in Boca Raton, a landmark of sorts, I later found out had been torn down.

  My call was transferred from one department to the next before I was finally told they had no prepaid plan for June Wright, only a declaration of her funeral wishes. I already knew what those were so I thanked the woman and hung up.

  Pastor Gordon called me the next day. He was clearly on a mission to make sure June would not linger in death as she was in the remainder of her life.

  “I’ll send you a list of some funeral homes wit
h estimated prices for their prepaid plans,” he said.

  “Do you have any first hand information of any that are better or more ethical?” I asked. The paper printed a horror story at a local funeral home a few weeks ago and it popped into my mind during this conversation.

  “I do and I’ll highlight a few of them that I prefer to use,” he answered.

  “Thank you, Pastor Gordon. Are you Scottish?” I asked. “Gordon was my grandmother’s maiden name.”

  “I most certainly am. Full blooded. I should be wearing a kilt instead of a collar,” he joked.

  “She was too. Thelma Gordon Husen. Can’t get too much more Scottish than that,” I said.

  “You’re mother is a lovely woman. We had a very nice conversation today,” Pastor Gordon told me.

  I declined to correct him. It wasn’t worth expending any more energy on explaining our legal relationship, especially to such a kind, Scottish man of God.

  When the list of funeral providers arrived from Pastor Gordon in the mail, he had highlighted the ones he liked best as promised. Top of the list was The Neptune Society. I didn’t think I needed to shop around much for a prepaid plan since June didn’t care enough to do it for herself.

  This had become a pattern with June, assuming things were taken care of when in reality they weren’t. Like when she insisted Rosemary and Joe and Darlene, her neighbors, had promised help her if she needed it. They were capable friends and my assistance wasn’t necessary, according to her.

  When push came to shove, they wanted nothing to do with June. As soon as she moved out of the condo, none of her so-called friends ever called or visited her again. June built an imaginary sense of security around herself in order to prove she was an independent woman. The rest of the world took a very different view of her imaginary well-laid plans.

  She had a successful career and supported herself quite well until she married my father. Then where he worked, she worked. They were a package deal in all facets of their lives. He took the job on the condition there was also a position for her. At Rogers Peet in New York City, he had the job of president and June became the ladies dress buyer. When Rogers Peet closed, he moved to Lytton’s in Chicago and again June took the position of dress buyer.