A Goose Chase Ending At A Farm

Waking up this morning, I had the feeling I was lifting the page in a long saga. 

It was a new chapter in the story Bernice has enriched my life with.  When she died, and all of her odds and ends fell into my hands, I didn’t know what to do with them.  I left them in their boxes, her scrawl fading on the masking-tape labels, stuffed in a closet for a long time.  Then one day, packing for a move, I poured myself a drink, sat down on the floor, and dove in.   It was almost all papers; address books, letters, church bulletins.  Stacks  of notes scratched out to herself in her final decade.  I read them all.  It was like a tragic chronicle of her decline.  The notes she wrote became increasingly desperate and despairing, and it was clear that she knew full well the abyss she was sliding into- financially, socially, and mentally, as her memory slipped away.   Not all of it was heartbreaking.  There were cassette tapes of her singing with her husband, a musician, and news clippings with him posed and smiling with hi ukulele.  And in her address book, there was a page labeled: “relatives”.  

It’s funny how alzheimers erases memories more or less in order, from the present back; like a tide flowing out to a grey and fathomless sea.  Bernice couldn’t remember the years she’d written those notes to herself.  She could only barely, on a good day, remember the husband she’d been so proud of and devoted to.  But she could remember her childhood- her parents and brothers, “our farm” that she’d grown up on- clearly, any day.  From the many stories she’d shared over years of lucid moments, I recognized some of the names on her list instantly.  The name of her older two brothers had notes dashed in at the corner of the entries- “died” and the year.  But her younger brother had no such note, and there he was, his address and phone number. 

I called.  I had been told that she had no family, none.  No living relatives at all.  And yet, when the phone was picked up, it was her brother.  He put his wife on, and we talked.  They were quite elderly and perhaps memory failures were a family affliction; I told them that Bernice had died, and was never sure if they understood what I was saying.  In the end, they were just confused and asked me to contact their daughter instead; they gave me her name. 

After some time on the internet, I found an address for her.  I sent a box of almost everything, and a letter.  In the letter, I explained that I had her original birth certificate, wedding certificate, and high school diploma.  Printed on vellum, bound in velvet or leather, in a time when such documents carried a reverence.  I thought they belonged with her family.  The niece wrote me back, just as I moved.  In the turmoil, the letter was lost.  By the time I found it, she had moved, too, and all the googling in the world brought me no closer to finding her again. 

But her letter had mentioned that her father, Bernice’s brother, had died and she was planning to take over the farm.  The same one Bernice had grown up on and told me stories about.  In Indiana. 

So, when we planned this trip, we marked out our route in such a way that we would pass through the town she’d grown up on.  And this morning, I took those documents, a picture of Bernice, and the crinkling page of her address book, and drive to the house number she’d listed under her brother’s name. I didn’t know what to expect.  I didn’t know whether I’d end up disappointed or whether something wonderful would happen; whether anyone lived there at all, whether this niece, who would be nearly 80 now, was even living.  But I knew I had to try. 

I left J and the kids to swim at the hotel pool and followed my GPS deep into rolling rows of seedling corn.  The morning was crisp and sunny when I pulled onto a dirt road and saw a pretty little white farm house nestled into a bend.  That was it. 

I pulled up and saw the sweetest, tidiest little farm.  The white house backed to a sturdy barn and a silo crept over with strands of ivy.  There was a little patio off to the side, and a garden patch, freshly weeded.  Redwinged blackbirds flitted from the lilacs and the sound of frogs and crickets rang from the fields all around. 

I walked up and knocked at the door.  I waited and held my breath.  I waited some more.  I knocked again, a little louder this time, just in case. 

I waited, to be honest, a little longer than a person who doesn’t want to be creepy ought to wait.  And finally, had to retreat down the porch steps.  I sent a message to J that no one had answered.  Next I meant to ask at the post office, to see if she still kept the PO box that was the return address on her letter those years ago. 

Just as I was leaving, he answered, “is there a mailbox?”

“Yes, but I can’t really know who lives here”

I didn’t want to leave these precious documents in some random person’s mail box. 

But that J, he’s always thinking for me when I’m too emotional to do it myself. 

“Is there a name on it?  People used to put names on their mailboxes”. 

I hadn’t even thought to check.  So I pulled over, and looked.  And there it was.  I wrote her a novel of a note, slid the items into the box, took a picture (I mean I’d been parked outside this house for 20 minutes, what’s a little more creepy at that point anyways), said a little prayer, and that was it. 

I so wish I’d met her.  Had a chance to talk to her, and ask about the farm, about Bernice before the tide of her mind went out.  But I still consider it a minor miracle that I was able to find this relative that supposedly didn’t exist.  I am thankful that Bernice’s last few treasures found their way back to where they began and belong. 

And for me,  it was really something to see the farm I had envisioned so often, to know that a hundred years ago, Bernice had played where I was standing.  It was like getting to step into those stories, into that mysteriously clouded mind, and see something even more clear than the memories.  It made me happy to see it looking so well.  Somehow, even though it may have been a bit anticlimactic, it felt like a good way to end the chapter.  Like a full circle had been made.  But in a way that was gentle.  Like her. 

About a Miracle

Every year on December 15th, I especially remember Bernice.
I've talked a lot about Bernice, but I haven't told you yet about the miracle that happened. 
In 2006, I had been looking after Bernice for years.  By then I was her guardian, and I thought I knew all that I could about her.  I had read each page in the two 3-inch binders of her nursing home record.  I had spoken to the staff and the hospice volunteers who had known her in recent years.  I had listened to hours of partially intelligible information from the star herself.  As far as I knew from what I'd observed and been told, she had no living relatives at all.  No possessions whatsoever, aside from a cracked leather purse containing just dusty reading glasses and an ancient lipstick- firebrick red.  There were a few toys and movies, one pair of socks, that the nursing home had doled out to her.  That was it.
Now it's strange I know, to say that a person in her nineties, who had been on and off hospice for years, who could no longer sit up or feed herself, could die suddenly or unexpectedly. But that is what she did.  I honestly thought she had years left. The day she died, I was supposed to be taking her to the eye doctor.  I was supposed to be treating her to a lunch outing.  I was not supposed to be in the linoleum hallway with rumpled hair, everyone staring at me for an answer.
And so I'm a bit ashamed to say that I was completely unprepared.  I was still working hard on how to set things right in her life. I hadn't gotten to the part about preparing for her death.  And after the reality hit me, after my grief had registered, there I was. Fresh out of college, standing there in my flip-flops with a dead body on my hands.  What to do about that?
I had no money. She had no money. Certainly not enough to pay for any kind of service that involved the use of a hearse.  I had no idea what she wanted.  Her chart had a copy of her DNR, but no will or funereal preference of any kind.  The head nurse wanted that body gone now, and what was I supposed to do?  Carry it home until I could figure it all out?  There was a program a hospice worker told me about, where if you donate a body to science, to medical research, they will come and collect it, without charge.  After pacing and deliberating, panicking and weeping, I called them.
I felt cornered. I felt it was my only option. While I was grateful to have any option, I could not shake the feeling that it wasn't right. Bernice had been a fairly religious person from what I'd gathered, and I just didn't think she would have approved. I was so uneasy about the decision, something about it just felt wrong.
Back up. The day before- less than 24 hours before all of this- something amazing had happened.
I showed up to feed Bernice her dinner, and there was a note waiting for me.  I had been told that no one else ever visited Bernice.  But that wasn't quite true, as it turns out.  The note was left by the pastor of the church Bernice used to attend.  Knowing she had no family or living friends, the note read, this pastor had made a point to stop in every year or two and check on her. It had been several years, but he happened to have visited that day while I was out.  The nurses had told him about this girl who had become her guardian and caretaker, and he wanted to leave a note to say thank you.  Thank you for being there for Bernice, it read.  And also, he would like to talk with me. Could I please call sometime?  He left a number.
I called that evening, but no one answered.  I left a message.  Sometime after my message, in the night, Bernice died.
Fast forward to the next morning.  I am at the nurse's station, bent over the grimy phone with the curly cord.  I'm talking to the medical research people, answering questions about Bernice's health history. They are on the way to pick up her body.  I am nearly done, getting ready complete her registration, when my cell phone rings.  It is the pastor.
For some reason, maybe because it is the only other person in the world, it seemed, who ever knew and loved Bernice, it felt very important to take that call.  To hear the voice of this Other Person, and not be as alone in my grief.  I asked the woman on the phone to give me just a minute, and I answered.
The pastor introduced himself.  He told me how surprised he had been to learn about me, and that he had known Bernice for so many years.  How is she today, he asked.
Actually, I was sorry to tell him, she had passed away.  Of course he was shocked.
And then he said, "well then I guess it's more important than ever for you to know- I have her things".
Her Things.
Things?  She has things?
Having no one else, Bernice had left a few of her personal possessions with her church pastor when she entered the nursing home.  No one there had known.
Sometimes miraculous things happen, Peanuts.  Sometimes they just do.  Not only had this person, who hadn't visited in years, happened to have stopped by the day before she died and left me that number, he happened to call just as I was about to give her body away to science, and he happened to have a tupperwear box.  With a piece of masking tape across the front, labeled in her hand, "funeral plans".

Who would have guessed?
Not me.  Not hospice.  Certainly not the nursing home staff.  Not even the Pastor himself, who had never opened the box in the many years it had resided in his attic.  But just guess what was in that box?  The deed to a burial plot.  The one sharing a headstone with her husband.  It had been waiting decades for her.  It almost waited forever.
There was a whole plan, outlined and initialed in her curvy script.  Everything was decided. Everything was paid for in advance.
Well, almost everything.  It just so happened that the only thing not covered was the cost of etching the date of her death into the headstone.  $150.  And it just so happened that the exact amount of money in her nursing home account, the exact amount I "inherited" from Bernice, was $150.  And 34 cents. 
When I picked up the phone to cancel the registration and to call the mortuary she had chosen 20 years prior, my hands and voice were shaking.  With gratitude for that miracle.  That miracle of being able to do a final justice, give a final gift to my friend.
I went the next day to meet the pastor.  I sat down and had tea with him and his wife.  It was wonderful to hear them remember her, as she once was before her mind was blanketed in a hazy blanket of dementia, like snow.  By the time I met her I could only make out the vague shapes of what her personality and history really was.  But these people had seen some of those things before the snow fell.  Hearing them describe her was like getting a peek at what had been mostly hidden from me for years.  We talked a long time.  Then he brought out the rag-tag containers of her life's remnants.  Mostly old papers.  Some costume jewelry, mostly broken.  A few nostalgic treasures- her birth certificate, her high school diploma.  A couple of photographs.  All bundled in cracked rubber bands and sealed in yellow tupperwear, dented lock-boxes, and faded 1960's cosmetic cases.
I turned to leave- on my way to the mall.  The funeral home had called and asked for something to bury her in.  All her clothes belonged to the nursing home.  I was dreading this.  How could I pick something she would have liked?  As I began to leave, though, the pastor's wife stopped me.  There was one more thing, she remembered.  One dress.  A fancy blue one.  It had been Bernice's favorite.
She was buried in that dress, with no one but me under the pine tree, watching the casket drop.  Later I stood up in her old church and said a few words, though no one but the pastor himself and J, in the front row, knew well enough to realize how much the world should miss her.
It will always be a spot of rawness for me, like something that rubs and rubs against your skin too long, that I didn't do enough for Bernice.  That I didn't move fast enough, didn't push hard enough. That even after everything, I never did get her out of that awful place in time.  As many long days and late nights as I spent trying my best for her, I will never, never, never feel like I did as much as I should have to make things right for her in her lifetime.  Her death in that place is a constant little nagging reminder to me now, "Don't wait until tomorrow. You can't be sure it will be there". 
But this little miracle that happened, this appearance of the pastor, this materialization of arrangements already made, and being able to visit now and see her name there next to her husband's, just as she surely, unquestionably wanted it to be...it brings me some peace.  Maybe all my efforts were misguided and the whole time I knew Bernice I was just annoying the crap out of her.  I have no idea. But just maybe, if nothing else, I was meant to be in her life just so that things could come together exactly as they did, that things might be set right for her in death.  I find so much comfort in that, in knowing that there was one solid thing I was able to do for my friend that I'm sure made a difference to her.
It reminds me that even if we can't tell when we get started or when we're in the middle of our relationships with those we love, in the end-somehow- we matter.  We all have some purpose to fulfill, something important to give and be given by the people in our lives.  It reminds me that it's truly never to late to be there for each other, never too late to keep trying to make things right or better for someone.  And it reminds me that even, maybe especially, when things are bleak and hearts are breaking, miracles do happen.  They just do. 

Matters of the Heart

Today is the anniversary of when I lost Bernice.
It seems strange to consider what a deep scar that loss left in my life, how very important and close to my heart Bernice was, and to know at the same time that she probably never had any idea who I was.  If she's up in heaven, maybe some angel is telling her, "some gal called C down there is saying all kinds of prayers for you today", and she's going, "who?"
Do you have people like that?  People who you care about, who matter to you, and you wonder if they have ever really seen you?  Or someone you've been nice to, or helped indirectly through a friend or a donation, or felt compassion for, or just respected or admired- though they may never have known about you at all?
Sometimes it can almost seem pointless, right? Doing for someone who will never thank you, hurting for someone who can't appreciate the sympathy, giving without a return.  Loving someone who might not love you back.
Or they might.
The not knowing can be difficult ground to walk over.  Does it matter that I'm here? Does it matter that I care?  Is it worth all that's difficult when I can't tell if I'm making a difference?
In little ways, all relationships are a bit like that.  You can always wonder if what you have to offer makes the impact you want to have.  You can always suspect that you're not loved enough, that you care too much, or feel like there's just not enough payoff for how much you feel yourself giving.
Parenting is certainly like that.  Will I ever know, even when She's all grown up and turned out, whether how hard I work mattered, really?  Whether She has any inkling how incredibly much I love Her, how hard I tried to do the right things for Her? Will She end up all messed up despite it all? Will She hate me or blame me or feel I failed Her, despite the fact that I put my whole soul into doing my best?
I don't know.  I might never, never know. 
A scary part about loving someone so much, is you can never get the credit you deserve.  Because maybe it's impossible for anyone to totally get how valuable they are to another person.
Little One can't tell me if I'm doing this mom thing the right way. Bernice was never able to say, "I'm glad you're here."  Most of the people I've reached out to over time...I'll never even know whether they are ok, much less get a medal from them in the mail for Trying Really Hard to be Helpful. 
So does it matter?  Is it worth it?  All this trying and loving and caring and worrying and grieving?
Well...I think so.
Bernice never knew my name.  But I remember a time she was in the hospital, covered in a tangle of wires and tubes in a strange room with beeping noises and flashing monitors, and when I got there she was FREAKING OUT.  The doctor was about to have her both physically restrained and doped up because they couldn't keep her from yanking out her IVs, screaming and swearing, and smacking the nurses when they tried to help her.  She was totally out of control.  But I had this feeling.  "Give me a minute" I told the doctor.  "Just let me see if I can help".  He was hard to convince, saying that she was too delusional to be responsive to anything, but he agreed I could have one minute.  I walked in and put my hand on her arm, and she froze.  I said her name, I talked to her like I always did.  "Hi, Bernice.  It's C.  I'm here to visit you, how are you doing?"  And wouldn't you know. She reached her frail, IV-bruised hand over to clasp mine.  She relaxed back in the bed.  Two tears slid down her gorgeously high cheekbones, and she rested against the pillow.  She didn't say anything back to me that evening. But she held my hand, and she was calm, and after a little while she fell asleep.  I'll never really know why. But I like to think it's because on some level, she knew I was someone safe.  Someone who loved her.
And I think the same is true about our children and our friends and family, and the homeless guy we smile at on the corner, and the kid in Haiti who gets a notebook because we bought some raffle ticket.  I think that even if they don't really know how much we care, or how much we've done for them, or even who we are, they do know that someone cares.  I think on some level we can all feel when we are loved.  Even a little.  Even from far away.
Though Bernice may have never known who I was, and even if I didn't do everything for her the way she would have wanted me to, I think that what I did do mattered because I believe she knew somehow that she was cared about; not totally alone.
And I think that it was all worthwhile because whether it all mattered to her or not, one thing I know for sure is that it mattered to me.  Sometimes when we love in the hardest situations, when maybe there is the least recognition or gratification for our efforts, we learn the most, and are changed the most, and have the best opportunity to realize the value of loving for the sake of loving, giving for the sake of giving.
Today is a good reminder for me of why it matters to love recklessly.  Even when it's easier to be a cynic, even when it doesn't feel safe, and even when it doesn't come back to me.  Even when it means grieving a loss.  Whether or not Bernice ever loved or remembered me, I loved her, I remember her.  And it matters.  Whether or however much Little One loves me when She grows up, I will always have loved her, and it matters.  Even if all of you don't know it, I love you Peanuts in some way as well.  And whether you can tell or not, it is mattering right this minute.  To you, maybe, and definitely to me.

A Day for Family

Today is December 15th.
Last year, I wrote about Bernice. How we found each other and how, on this date years later, I lost her. I remember Bernice always, but today I'm putting some flowers out by the flag that the navy sent me when she died, looking at old pictures, and drinking a chocolate milk (her favorite). Part of my ongoing promise never to let her memory fade out.
The holidays are coming up. Remembering Bernice reminds me to think about people who don't have families to visit them with cookies and presents. It reminds me to be so, so appreciative of my own family and how lucky we are to have each other, however imperfect we each may be. And it especially reminds me of one of the best lessons I learned from her, which is that "family" means much more than similar DNA.
If we are lucky, we're born to a family and we get to keep them. But as we go, we also get to choose the people that we love and that we weave into our lives until they are part of us. As we go, we find people we decide to belong to. One of the best things about being a person, I think, is something that Bernice taught me, and Little One continues to teach me every day.
We don't have to be alone. We don't have to be born into perfect families, we don't have to be involved in a Great Romance. We can choose to seek each other out, even in the most unlikely places, even across oceans, even across stereotypes, even through fear, and we can choose- like children do- to love.
When I die, the flag will probably be given away, the pictures maybe thrown out, along with so many other objects, precious to me and meaningless to others. That's ok. They're really just little loops of string around my fingers, little reminders of memories, and ideas, and family. One day when Little One sifts through my things, dispersing and dispensing of them, She might not realize it but the best things I can leave Her are things I inherited from others myself, including Bernice. Including from Her. Things that can't be thrown away. Like how to choose to be a part of a family-shared DNA, or not. Like how to choose to love.

A Long Story

Today is a special day for me. In a bittersweet kind of way.
Three years ago today, I got a phone call very early in the morning which was one of those things that make your heart stop and your knees buckle, even though you were expecting it. Today is when I especially remember Bernice, because it is the anniversary of when she died 3 years ago.
Bernice was my first patient when I volunteered for hospice. She got kicked off of hospice a year later, though, for just flat out refusing to die. Which was SO like her.
She was 92 when I met her. She had advanced dementia, and used to think she saw cats coming out of the air conditioning vent, and suspect the nurses aide of being a prohibition-era night club bookie. She had sparkly blue eyes, a smile so dazzling that it was pretty even without teeth, and cheekbones that Heidi Klum would kill for. She was feisty as all get out, sweet as pie, and hilarious.
The problem with Bernice was that even when you're funny and friendly and don't ask for anything, if you are marooned in a nursing home with no one to watch your back, and you have a disease which makes it impossible to advocate for yourself, you get forgotten, and sometimes mistreated. Bernice'd had the audacity to have outlived all of her family and friends. She used to have bedsores I could have fit my fist into. She would often talk and talk to herself, which annoyed some nurses into routinely putting her on psychotropic drugs so strong she wouldn't be able to move or eat for days, just lie there and drool. She had untreated infections. And other things.
No one cared at all about the complaints of some random kid. And she was my friend. So to make a long story short, I found a man who blatantly disregarded all the stereotypes he's supposed to fill as a lawyer, and became an angel for me. He took my case for free, and we got the nursing home in a bit of hot water, and in the end I became Bernice's legal guardian. Which kind of means that, at almost 96 years old, I adopted her.
Bernice was old and batty. But she was an amazing person. We had a LOT of fun together. It never mattered that most of what she said made no sense, because it was still a conversation. I never told her that no, I wasn't Essie from the club or no, it wasn't time to milk the cows, or no, that toy was not a real dog. I just went with it, and it was like being a kid and playing pretend again. And we would laugh ourselves into exhaustion, and she would say things to me like, "I'm sorry you don't have a name. But I love you." I sometimes went over to see Bernice with a heavy heart for whatever reason, but I never left with one.
My relationship with Bernice was one of the strangest I could imagine, because in a way she was like my grandmother; she was older and wiser, certainly. In moments of lucidity she gave me a lot of really profound advice and insights into life. And even though she never remembered who I was, she could tell if I was having a bad day, and would pat my hand and tell me, "there, there, now. Smile at it and it will go away".
At the same time, she was like my child. I had to cart her around. Remind her to take her vitamins. We played with dolls and toys- stuffed dogs were her favorite- I read her stories, fed her, brushed her hair, tucked her into bed. Once I had that precious guardianship paper in my hand, I made all her decisions for her.
Now that I have Little One around, I realize that Bernice taught me a lot about being a mom. For one thing, she was good practice. Once you learn how to spoon-feed a grown woman in a bad mood who keeps forgetting that she's supposed to be eating and (understandably) hates pulverized turkey, feeding a baby is a breeze. I can trim nails on a flailing hand, I can change a diaper in a blink. I can notice signs of sadness when there are no words to tell me something is wrong. I can play pretend.
But Bernice taught me more about being a parent that just those things. She taught me what it means to love someone. Love, I believe now, isn't about glittering surprises and storybook moments and getting lavished with the Things and the Words that you want. It's about patting someone on the hand when they are sad, and laughing with them when they're happy, even if what they think is funny makes no sense. It's in wiping spinach off of a chin, and putting band-aids on cuts. It's about getting screamed at and not getting angry. Bernice taught me a lot about patience and about appreciating the little payoffs you get for loving someone- a smile or a hug. And she taught me that sometimes what makes Me happiest is realizing that it's not all about Me. I think that these are all part of being a parent, too.
Taking care of Bernice was a lot of work. At the end I was going to the nursing home 3 or 4 times a day, before and after work, and on my lunch break. Fighting with nurses and trying to get her to eat. And before I had a chance to do so many of the things I had planned for her- she was gone. But I'll never regret for a second the decision to tie her life to mine for awhile. Because she was fantastic and she was a really great friend. And she gave a lot to me that enriched my life and changed it in so many ways. And because I have her to thank, in a way, for everything I have now.
It was our third date I had to cancel when Bernice got pneumonia, and J brought me dinner and a book and stayed up with me all night in the hospital, holding her hand and talking with her quietly. And I knew there was something special about that guy. The day she passed away, I was so unprepared, suddenly having to sort out what to do with her, her stuff, her paperwork, and at the same time grieving. He sat in a chair in the hallway for hours without me even having a chance to speak to him. Not telling me what to do or trying to take over, but just being There. And I knew I was about to marry the right person.
I like to tell Bernice's story partly because I hope it sheds some light on a big problem that most of us tend to ignore. And partly to try to let people know that making friends with crazy old ladies can be super. And partly because it helps me feel like she's not being forgotten ever again.
Which as long as I'm around, she wont be. There are some toys in Little One's nursery that, if you look closely, have Bernice scrawled on the bottom in permanent marker. And She doesn't know it but the truth is that there are lots of other things, intangible ones, in Little One's world, that have Bernice's stamp on them too. Today I'm extra grateful for those things.