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“It’s not surprising that this has happened,” said the nurse practitioner from hospice, come to evaluate my continued participation according to Medicare guidelines. Twice last year, I was almost discharged for not being sick enough.
From behind her mask, her dove-gray eyes filled with compassion as she responded to questions of my physical decline the past two weeks: sunken brown eyes, skeletal frame, snaking veins crisscrossing my abdomen, thighs, and arms, and protruding ribs like a xylophone. In my bathroom mirror stood the image of a forlorn Nazi prisoner milling around the ice-packed grounds of Auschwitz. I paused and looked again, pinched the flabby skin of my bruised forearm. This was real.
“Your symptoms give specificity to your decline,” she continued, “especially the weight loss, despite the amount of food which you eat. Your advanced years, your weakened metabolism, and your diseased lungs also stress your breathing and wear you down,” she said while folding her notebook and dropping it in her pouch. “You now fit our hospice template: six months or less to live.”
I heard the words, “six months or less to live,” that defined the limits of my terminal illness, but still had to open my psyche to this reality and to surrender more deeply to the implications of my transition. I’d been in a holding pattern for over two years, blogged my experiences, worked the Twelve Steps of Chronic Pain Anonymous, and even participated in ZOOM meetings for the terminally ill. Now, there was palpable change in my body that required response, providing that my mental faculties hold out.
No more denial. No more rationalization. No more idealization.
More than ever, each twenty-four hours is a gift from Creator God to be cherished.
News of her transition on February 17, 2022, grieved me. A ninety-year-old college graduate, mother, grandmother, widow, teacher, concert-trained pianist, seamstress, and volunteer, she fully tasted the joys and hardships of life.
Years of her daughter’s stories endeared me to her, especially when needing help to their rustic cabin, summers, spent at Donner Lake at Truckee, California. There, as cheerful matriarch and widow, she greeted relatives and friends, even the brown bears that wandered nearby.
After her daughter had tended the final needs of her father, the focus shifted to her mother who soldiered on, still volunteering at her church and the Chappaqua Library in New York. Her passion for books, her deep interest in people, her indomitable will fired her spirit and attracted others to her wisdom and humor. Only dementia and a cancer diagnosis slowed her down, until her Spirit-filled release last week.
So, when the mother did pass, all legal and medical and burial plans were in order, thanks to her daughter’s daily phone contacts and timely visits, often with her husband; these occurred over the years. Her selflessness to expend energy and resources, despite chronic illness, still moves me.
Her mother’s name was Marge. She will be missed.
“Well, it’s official, Liz,” the hospice nurse said, her smiling dark eyes peering over her mask. I sensed good news coming as she unzipped her sleeveless quilted vest and sat opposite the Valentine bouquet on my dining room table. “Medicare has re-certified you until mid-April. Another will follow, but unlike before, there will be no hesitation—you’re finally beginning to look like a hospice patient, both in our records and in your person.”
She was right. Despite eating regularly, my weight continues to drop due to poor metabolism sloughing off the nutrients. Other than smaller pants my sister bought me last November, I’m loathe to replenish what’s hanging in my closet. My belt buckle holds everything together and keeps me presentable. Bulky sweaters of many colors cover a lot. Rather than pitch an old pair of blonde corduroys, this morning, my helper patched the hole in the seat; such still keeps February’s nip at bay.
Besides, my new slimness is quite the fashion, from what I observe online.
When I reflect upon my clothes history, a close look at trends had directed my choices and expended money, better used for other things, especially charities that I traipsed by. Only in later years, the ugliness of department store clothing drove me to significant finds at Goodwill or the Scholarshop.
Aside from this trivia about clothing, a time will come when I step outside of time and have no need of clothing. For the present, though, it’s about preparing my wedding garment, one day at a time. This, I cannot do alone.
Heart Whisperings 