Dear Readers,
I'm sorry if Chapter 15 of my blog (the one on handling grief) was a downer for you. It was an upper for me, because I got to put things into perspective for myself, and benefited greatly. In short, I observed that (1) losing someone hurts something awful, (2) I'm pretty much a wimp, (3) I seem to be taking my sweet time recovering from it, and (4), as they say on Broadway, “The show must go on!”
Today's chapter should be measurably bubblier, because it's about that show. That is, about maintaining the quality of life.
My current patient and kid sister has numerous diabetes-related maladies — including short-term memory loss — but I have come to realize that the good times we share far exceed the bad ones. What does it really matter if she can't remember what day it is? During my own senior moments, I often don't know what day it is, myself! Of much greater importance, every day in our caregiver/patient relationship has moments in it as rich as those we enjoyed together over seven decades ago.
True, Rawbaw rarely remembers what we did yesterday or today, or what's planned for tomorrow, let alone further down-calendar, but her long-term memory is razor sharp — worlds better than mine. When she tells me how I teased her in 1943 when she was 3 years old and I was in kindergarten, we get to laughing like two village idiots.
She even remembers the names of all the kids who lived on our city block of Orizaba Avenue in Long Beach, Calif., during World War II, the games we used to play, our parents' pet names for all of their children (Kay Reenie, Sook, Mikey Boy, Bird Legs, Chee-Chee, Babe, and Gifted Child), and the myriad details of growing up in a rented house directly across the street from Frances Willard Elementary School.
Rawbaw also still plays a mean game of Scrabble — and wins more than her share of our card games. We are running “Kings in the Corners” into the ground, but neither of us minds. Nor do we mind eating Burger King Whopper Juniors for lunch almost every day of our lives.
As you may have guessed, a sense of humor is essential to our day-to-day happiness. As it happens, Rawbaw's penchant for mirth is as strong as her play instinct. I once thought I was the morale officer around here, but it has become clear that she handles that duty now.
So, life here is much more than trips to doctors, clinics, and labs. It is a replay of wonderful old memories and a flourish of new giggles. More than that, it is a lively, unlikely adventure, begun late in life by two siblings who have no doubt that it will be a long story.
Rawbaw is an inveterate joker. Every morning she tries to reason with her funky dog, knowing that she (the human, not the hound) will be outsmarted. Rawbaw's shameless mutt has reduced the game of fetch to “One Fetch.” Doggie Brooke (a.k.a. Flub, Wilhelmina Big-Hiney, and Dog-Dog) invariably escapes through the doggie door to the back yard with the ball, showing constant disdain for the time-honored game of chasing it and and bringing it back. As the dog slides victoriously out the doggie door with the ball in her big mouth, Rawbaw invariably says, “You little rat.” They really enjoy “One Fetch,” now that Rawbaw has conceded that the dog was brilliant to think of it.
Rawbaw's love of classical music is rubbing off on me a bit. We watch the Performing Arts channel on TV together, and I respect the ballet dancers for their grace and physical strength, and the opera singers for their prodigious pipes, but I don't think I'd ever pay the price of admission and show real cultural growth. Rawbaw, a professional musician, likes to see the external signs of refinement in me, though.
We watch a lot of TV most evenings, and both of us get a lot out of the cops-and-robbers show, “Elementary,” and the long-running hit comedy series, “The Big Bang Theory.” But I can't do her forensic crime dramas or endless house-hunter programs, and she can't do much news. Doggie Brooke, who stretches out between us on the eight-dollar couch every night, has no taste at all and will watch anything.
One of Rawbaw's best friends is a gourmet cook, and his wife makes wonderful salads. They drop by frequently to deliver and help eat
fantastic home-cooked meals at our humble abode.
Kindness in Appleton takes many shapes. We have exceedingly generous next-door neighbors to either side of us who bail us out with their big, gasoline-powered snow blowers every winter when Rawbaw's tiny, plastic, electric-powered snow blower is overcome by the white stuff. (It doesn't take much.)
Rawbaw's home backs onto a ravine that is heavily forested, providing great scenery year-round. We make up stories about a white rhino who lives down there and tell them to the dog, who isn't buying.
A retired symphony violist, Rawbaw is teaching herself piano and filling the house with delightful music, reminiscent of our mother's piano-playing when Rawbaw and I were little kids in Long Beach, California. I keep threatening to learn guitar, but I've been making similar noises for several decades.
All this is not to say that I, the big brother, and Rawbaw, the kid sister, are a perfect team. (No big surprise there, right?)
Rawbaw is critical about my management of her kitchen, because she wants me to use the automatic dishwasher and I want nothing to do with it. (“New-fangled contraption,” I mutter to myself, as I fill the sink with sudsy water.)
She wants me to hire a kid to mow the lawn, but I cling to the chore as some kind of elixir of youth. (Rawbaw tells me every time I fire up the mower that I may have a heart attack and then where will she be? I always thank her for the cheery thought but mow the lawn anyway.)
She comments on my driving — and she's got me there. I have developed a phobia about left-hand turns. (I honestly suspect that most people crowding 80 shouldn't be piloting a motor vehicle. What's really scary is the fact that there are dinosaurs out there who are even crummier drivers than I am.)
Rawbaw is always saying I should take the day off, take a walk in the park, go to a movie, visit one of College Avenue's many bars, maybe meet the new girl of my dreams ... I tell her every time that I pace myself (and take several naps a day), don't like today's movies, don't drink, and am too old to chase women (which may not be true, but I'm sure my late wife would kill me if I did chase anyone new). I also tell Rawbaw that I am slowly acquiring all her wealth through devious means, adding that there is no need for her to worry about rewarding me for my good deeds here in Appleton.
In a word, Rawbaw is a fright and has always been a fright, going back to 1940.
(I am somewhat of a fright, myself, but mostly in self-defense.)
Rawbaw actually tells her friends that I am putting arsenic in her coffee. (Her friends never know when she's kidding or not. Neither do I.)
Two years ago, when she was at St. Elizabeth Hospital, on antibiotics for a very infected foot (a foot she eventually lost), her older sister Brooke (not Doggie Brooke) and I could see her private room filling up with doctors, nurses, technicians, assistants, cleaning ladies and food service people. Just as the room filled to absolute capacity, 74-year-old Rawbaw loudly declared, “Folks, I have an announcement to make. I'm pregnant!” Of course, she was no more pregnant than I was, but that's Rawbaw: more mischievous than a shock jock. Everyone in her hospital room gasped and didn't know what to say. So, Rawbaw mercifully added, “Just kidding!”
Rawbaw is also always making snide remarks about how I dress. I did buy a new pair of jeans after the seat in my only pair of trousers gave out while I was at Walmart recently. I suddenly felt a huge draft and heard inconsiderate snickers. Luckily, Walmart has everything. So, I bought a pair of Wranglers (42 waist, 31 in-seam) and was back in business. Rawbaw did say I looked pretty sharp in them when I wore them home, but it was obviously one of her tongue-in-cheek compliments. I could read her mind. (“Mike, you still look like a hick.”)
I could go on about that girl indefinitely. Suffice it to say: we are not grimly carrying on — we are living life, with all of its ups and downs, to the fullest, and I am determined to hang in as long as she does. I think it's the sibling rivalry thing, in spades.
—Michael E. Hearons
