A few days ago I visited a 93 year old friend of mine in a nursing home. Her 88 year old husband died a year ago last November. She has had various health problems, some with her legs and she fell a few times at her house. Her doctor put her in the home a year ago because she really wasn't able to take care of herself and there was no family or anyone nearby to look after her.
She was sitting on the side of her bed when I walked into her room, dressed in a blouse, slacks, a sweater with a sheep skin like collar, and sensible flat slippers, all in coordinated shades of green. Her walker was within reach and she was reading some small pamphlet; the daily paper was piled at the foot of the bed, obviously read. She looked up and smiled when she recognized me. I gave her a hug and she said "Sit there", pointing to the recliner by her night stand, "or here". I asked where she would like me to sit and she patted the bed beside her.
We began to talk. Usually our conversations kind of wonder around over past shared experiences or stories about our lives. I noticed some new pictures on the wall and she went through them all, pointing out her children, grandchildren and a recently new great grandson. One granddaughter is a doctor whom I had baby sat with while her parents went out for the evening, way back in the late '60's when I was divorced and living in a little apartment on the west side. A calender her son had made and given her for Christmas hung over the bed. He had put family pictures on it for each month. It still was showing January, so I took it down and we looked through it. There were pictures taken at her husbands wake on a few pages.
"I always thought I would die first", she said. "It all seems a blur to me", as she pointed out herself sitting with various family members receiving condolences. The funeral was over and she just didn't remember much about what went on. Her granddaughter who lives in Evansville and nearer than any of her other relatives had visited her last fall and taken her out to the grave site. I put the calender back up on the wall with April showing.
We talked about her sons, the oldest one lives in South Dakota and the other in Atlanta. Her oldest had been a missionary in Africa when I first met her back in the early '60's. She had visited him and his wife there, stayed about 21 days as she recalled in Liberia. "Looks just like Florida with palm trees and all" she said with a little chuckle which is her habit. Her daughter-in-law came back home with her she remembered. Then she talked about how that woman had, she thought, been having an affair with the family doctor and later left her son to marry the doctor. The doctor is now dead, but the former daughter-in-law who lives an hour away, "She always calls me mom", comes to family get togethers and was there for the wake and funeral.
I have heard some of these stories over the years, about the sons and their family problems, the oldest remarried and has a second family, the other son finally divorced his wife, who always seemed to be on some kind of medication and probably would have died of a drug overdose at some point if it hadn't been for the care of her daughter who later became the doctor.
But Myra told me a new story this time. She and Gerald were married by a judge they knew at midnight in the town where she lived and he grew up. She said Gerald wanted to get married, but she wasn't so sure. She was four years his senior and he was only 19. In fact, he had been her pupil in school, though he never graduated. When she had been younger, her mother had a dream and always said Myra would get married on Friday. It was a Friday night and they had been out on a date and Gerald said lets call the judge and get married. Myra didn't think the judge would want to get out of bed and marry them, but he did and didn't seem to mind.
Then she went on to tell about them coming to Indianapolis as newlyweds from Kentucky. Her mother-in-law had told Gerald he could get a job in his brother's garage here, but when they got here there was no job. It was 1939, but Gerald got a factory job and soon their oldest son was born. Gerald was finally drafted, went into the Navy and to Norfolk, Virginia. Myra wasn't working and had a small child to raise. Gerald would send her letters from the ship he was on asking her to get him out, he didn't like it. He said he hid out on the ship to keep from having to mop and clean. She didn't remember who or what agencies she talked to but she did try, explaining their condition. The war ended and Gerald came home.
Gerald didn't like being bossed around. Myra has told me about his independence. He eventually started his own company and was last in the vinyl siding business. We had him put the siding on our house back in the '80's. That business allowed him to go off to Florida and play golf during the winter, leaving Myra at home. One of the pictures on the calender showed the Masonic rites for Gerald at the funeral home. Myra said he joined but she didn't remember him going to many meetings. "If they had played poker, he would have been there every time" she said giving another little chuckle.
During our talk Myra said her sons had sold her house, so she guessed "this is going to be my home." She said the food was good. They had been entertained earlier that day by a fourth grade class from a nearby school. The 4th graders are paired with residents at the home, and Myra had waved at her friend while the group was performing. Occasionally Myra gets letters from some of the younger women she worked with over the years, but since her family is scattered, she seldom has visitors. She says she does get lonely and she guessed depressed at times. But then she said, "I've learned that you make your own happiness, others don't do it for you."
I met Myra when we both worked for the same company many years ago. For some reason, one Spring day as I was going into the office I stopped and picked a dandelion, and I gave it to Myra as I walked by her desk. She reminded me of that, and I guess that may have had something to do with our becoming friends. I watched my mother die in a nursing home. It is not easy to walk through those halls and see people in various stages of decline, waiting to die. But I enjoyed my talk with Myra. Maybe the hour I was there meant as much to her as it did to me.
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