Ralph and Isabelle are now under hospice
care. At eighty-nine and eighty-seven, respectively, they each have an array of
health issues, and many of the things they used to easily do for themselves are
now very, very difficult if not beyond them altogether. For several decades
they have been paying premiums on an insurance policy that was supposed to help
them pay, when the time came, for assistance in doing the things they once did
for themselves. But now that the time has come, the insurance company has told
Ralph and Isabelle that they don’t need any assistance and has refused to pay
their claims. If I correctly understand Isabelle, the people who steered them
to hospice did so in large part to ease their financial burden.
The decision to go on hospice has been
particularly hard on Isabelle.
“At my age, I could go any time, I realize
that,” she said. “I’ve got health problems, but they’re not so bad that I want
to go just now.”
Monday, the hospice people spent several
hours in Ralph and Isabelle’s apartment getting them setup with their drugs and
moving in a hospital bed for Ralph.
“I was able to keep it together as long as
they were there,” Isabelle said. “But the minute they left, I cried.”
Al, who like Ralph is eighty-nine, has
opinions on everything, including death. But sometimes his views are
contradictory, and Isabelle sometimes finds comfort in that.
“Al says he just wants to die and get it
over with,” Isabelle said last night. “I’m not sure I believe him, though. He
says that one day, and the next day he’s talking about some miracle food that
will keep him going forever. He read somewhere that a scientist said, ‘if the
sun touches it, eat it.’ So, now he’s eating the skin of all the vegetables and
fruit that he can get a hold of. I don’t think he’s really in a hurry to die.”
While circling the grounds one morning, I
was overtaken by a short, spunky, plump and perky Hispanic woman.
“Mind if I walk with you a while?” she
asked.
“Not at all,” I said.
She said she is a private care giver for
three Covenant Woods’ residents. She helps Bobby get a shower every morning,
and there are two women whom she helps on alternate days. When she is done
here, she goes to her real job at the Regional Rehabilitation Hospital in
Phenix City. If she has enough time, she likes to take a brisk walk around
Covenant Woods before she heads to Alabama.
“I’m trying to lose weight. See, I’ve gone
point-six miles so far,” she said, holding up a pedometer. “I go to Cooper
Creek Park whenever I can. The path over there is level, and I’ll walk a while
then run about a quarter of a mile and then walk some and then run a little
more. My goal is to run a 5K.”
She and her husband, who is retired
military, have two sons in college and are always looking for ways to improve
their cash flow.
“They wanted me to come to work here,” she
said. “I asked them what the job paid. When they told me, I said, ‘No way.’”
Mae is tall, thin, always impeccably dressed
and partial to wide-brim hats. She often looks as if she is on her way to sip
mint juleps with the fine ladies of Louisville on Derby day. She would not, in
the manner of Eliza Doolittle, yell, “Come on, Dover! Move your bloomin’ arse!”
She might, however, say it in a conversational tone, just to see how the people
nearby react. Mae is unflappable, although she would have made a great flapper,
and she needed every ounce of her unflappability the other day.
Al and I were standing near the elevator
talking about nothing much when Mae came along. She joined the conversation,
which soon turned to the topic of Al’s diapers. Al, who experiences leaking
fore and aft, has worn diapers for some time, but his doctor recently recommended
a different type of diaper and gave Al a few samples. The transition was not
easy.
“Every time I do this,” Al said as he
reached for something on an imaginary shelf and twisted at the waist, “they
ride up and dig into my crotch. It hurts. And the worst part is they’re lacy.”
And with that, Al undid his belt and let his
trousers fall.
“See,” he said, pointing to the diaper’s
waist band, a strip of plastic mesh.
Mae was unfazed. But Marvin, who stepped out
of the elevator and saw Al with his pants down to his ankles, stretching and
gyrating to illustrate his difficulties with the diapers, was taken aback and
went hurriedly on his way without uttering a word.
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