This note is not so much about the travel, although we did drive over 4400 miles back and forth to Memphis in a two week period. We were notified in April that my mother in law Beverly had metastasized breast cancer. In the spine and the liver. So we went to say our good byes and it was good, bad, hard, humorous and loving. She worried primarily about what would become of her precious husband Ben. She was the caregiver of a stroke victim for fifteen years. She was also a journalist, a writer and a former professor of English, Latin and French. She still had a pen pal in France, Pierre, who had visited the family years earlier in New Jersey. She belonged to a book club, had participated in women's rights groups in the 60's and 70's and had raised three amazing kids. She had six of her own grandchildren and took on Ben's grandkids as her own as well.
The family pitched in. Son Lee is a nurse and works for a hospital as a nurse recruiter. But he was always our medical point person when it came to Ben, and then later, with Beverly. He and Lindley and sometimes Lindley's husband Tim took off work to go to doctor visits with them each. Toward the end, Lee was invaluable, he moved in with them and stayed for the most part until she died. Sister Lindley bore the brunt of daily support over the years because of the "freedom" she had owning her own interior design business. Independent business owners don't get paid time off. Really it meant that her business suffered. Especially through the chemo several years ago and again this past April while we watched Beverly slip away at home in hospice care. She and her husband Tim also took over the finances a year ago to stop the financial bleeding. Beverly frequently forgot to pay bills on time and wasn't rectifying her account and typically had $400 or more monthly in insufficient fund fees. And credit card debt was mounting.
We had a family conference, including one of Ben's two daughters and we all agreed that Lindley and Tim should take over, and we had Ben's daughters agree to power of attorneys getting put into place for each of them with respective family members. Ben was not happy relinquishing control, but the situation was getting worse instead of better. Richard helped from afar by communicating about the bills whenever needing clarification. Lee helped interpret the medical bills. Tim kept a meticulous volume of it all, taking good care of record keeping far and away more vigilant than on his own finances. Lindley stopped by to bring dinner over regularly, making sure Ben had lunches as well as providing all the groceries after Beverly's car was totaled in the weeks prior to the medical diagnosis.
Lindley helped her mom refinance the house awhile back to a lower interest rate. She took the credit cards away, and paid them down $4500 in one year. Time. All it took was time away from her business. We begged Ben's family to come and help. With any of it. To come help with Ben while we aided Bev through chemo and couldn't care for him, or when he had some intermittent health issues and needed more care. For years. They didn't come. They couldn't make the time. They didn't come to visit while Beverly went through chemotherapy. Only one of the three took the time to visit in the two weeks while Beverly slowly slipped away forever.
So Lindley, her husband Tim and brother Lee and we continued to help out. To provide trips to the doctor. Meals. Treats. Financial assistance with whatever they needed. Shopping services for food and for clothes and for doctors and countless medical visits for them both. Cleaning services. I donated a gift certificate one year for $120 for a maid. Beverly promptly misplaced it. Lindley donated art and decorative items and tables and a rug and lamps and a chest to their humble furniture collection and the house looked like a home.
Ben had COPD and diabetes and sometimes he was worse than others. We came in from out of town to help with one of the chemo sessions and Beverly's resulting incapacitation. We never kept receipts, we just kept giving. She'd lost her hair and was so frugal about herself, she wouldn't buy a new wig, instead choosing to wear her deceased sister in law's blond one. Bev had dark, dark hair, so this was riveting. We were all enchanted with Blond Bev! One night at dinner, it had slipped forward. Richard exclaimed she looked just like Donald Trump and convinced her to point her finger and yell "You're Fired"! She was willing to play along, and this had us all howling at the dinner table. I have that one on video but have been forbidden by Lindley of showing it to anyone. Bev was a very private person, but she had a willingness to play.
We provided technical support from afar and when we visited. Richard spent countless hours on the phone helping Beverly access her student and school information online and the tech support she needed while continuing to teach. We helped reduce the technology and television bills. We put her cell phone on our account for three years and on Lee's for one. She lost it repeatedly in the house. Sometimes it would disappear for weeks before Lee or Lindley or Tim or one of the grandkids were able to find it again. Lee helped in person whenever needed. One time she lost her router. Her router! We have no idea what she did with it. Lee searched for hours on two occasions, finally locating it. She had no explanation for why she had unplugged it and moved it in the first place. That was Beverly.
We provided Apple TV's and computers and new TVs. We signed them up for Netflix and taught Ben to use it, so he could continue to watch the shows he wanted to watch. For awhile it was TNT Classics, but he also loved old horror movies.
Beverly gave some of her more expensive jewelry to her daughter over the years. Some was put away for safekeeping, because Beverly had, by now, lost several of the nice pieces of jewelry. She was the epitome of the absent minded professor. She lost everything. Keys, wallets, phones, credit cards, remote controls, recipes, jewelry. And a router.
Two years ago we provided a Destin vacation for the entire family. Two large condos on the beach. We gave up our master bedroom so Ben had privacy and easy access to the bathroom. Tim and Lindley drove Beverly and Ben down from Memphis. Lee helped us pay for the condos. Richard and Lee helped Ben to the beach each day. The nice chair guys made room for us at the foot of the boardwalk so that Ben wouldn't have to walk far.
My mother went along on that trip because we had spent two years of my childhood living in Fort Walton Beach so Destin was "our beach" too. And she finally had the freedom, after caregiving my Parkinson's father for twenty five long years, he had passed the month before. She went from caring for my recently deceased dad to helping care for Ben that week. Beverly was still pretty knocked out from the "Chemo Brain". One night we sprinkled some of my dad's ashes on the beach and told stories and cried a bit.
My mother commented once on the trip, "Do they know they've told that story to me five times already?". I explained that there's a southern tradition of story telling and that this family was masterful about it. After awhile it felt like my family's stories. Mom was taken with Beverly and they were able to stay connected on Facebook. She had that effect on people.
One time, walking back to the condo from the beach, Ben was supported between Lee and Richard on the Boardwalk and stopped, exclaiming "Oh, Oh, Oh!". My mom and Beverly and I were right behind him and my mom noticed first that his shorts had dropped to his ankles. Without missing a beat, she continued her conversation with Bev, pulled up Ben's shorts and off we went!
I puréed food for Ben on that trip, because he had recently had all his teeth out in preparation for dentures. It was, we thought, Ben's final trip. He didn't seem well, he wasn't eating much, and the weight loss was the reason for the dropped drawers on the boardwalk. He had no teeth, waiting for the dentures, and he had a very low level of energy, likely a result of pain from having had his remaining teeth pulled. We were so pleased that his daughter and granddaughters were able to be there at the same time by sheer coincidence. I took multiple photos and we spent a few hours with them. Erin helped her dad get to the restroom from the restaurant. We exchanged emails.
We were all so happy to have some connection because Ben's relationship with his daughters had been so little over the years. We were led to believe that their mother was responsible for that, so we were happy for reconciliation of any kind. Very different from Beverly's family.
This is a family where Beverly's ex-husband, Poppy, joined us on the Destin trip. Where Poppy was at all holiday and birthday celebrations with Ben and Beverly. A family where Poppy simply referred to Ben as his "husband in law". Shortly after Ben's stroke, Poppy saw Ben walking on the side of the road and pulled over to see if he could figure out where Ben was heading. Turned out Ben wanted the cigarettes that were now forbidden by the doctors and by Beverly. Poppy obliged Ben, drove him to the store and got him a full carton and then drove him back home, much to Beverly's consternation.
Anytime that story got told, Beverly would get mad all over again at both Poppy and at Ben. But it was a genteel, quiet mad with pressed lips and the furrowed eyebrow communication that only Beverly could give. Although I can see it on Richard, Lee and Lindley's face too, from time to time.
We visited often and always treated them to meals out. One year we took them to Rendezvous after I determined that they had a service elevator we could use to get Ben down to the dining room. Amazing ribs! Ben loved barbecue and this was a special treat to get him there. At least once a year and sometimes twice we went to Memphis. I love to cook and discovered some things he really liked and would cook dinner. He seemed to really like my meatloaf and, oh my goodness, the English Toffee. I researched and then brought him diabetic ice cream called Clemmy's. Big win there, he loved it.
On one visit we took Ben and Beverly on a road trip to see Lee's land in Mississippi and to deliver Richard's daughter to her mother in Oxford, MS. We determined a visit to Taylor's Grocer was in order. They wanted me to see the "real south" and Taylor's was renowned for their catfish. I know Ben and Beverly missed Mississippi and their cabin, called Tara. Richard and Lee had helped to build it, hammering countless nails into the tin roof, and helping to put telephone poles to serve as the frame of the barn. Ben and Beverly were devastated to have to leave it after his stroke. They had kept the mantle from the house that Beverly's family had previously owned, the wood logs from that home making up the cabin at Tara. Their story was truly the "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" story, the family home needing to be relocated, a victim of the Tennessee Valley Authority project that re-homed thousands of people to flood the valley. When they left Tara, they brought the mantle with them. It stood now in their dining room at the condo. Ben still loves to walk out back of the condo and sit and stare into the trees.
All in all it was a pleasure to support two obviously in love, well suited elderly people who had run into some tough times. They respected each other, they loved one another and they were very happy together. We enjoyed Ben's wry sense of humor, because in spite of the stroke, we could communicate pretty well with him. His aphasia was not as bad unless he was truly stressed. I discovered he loved tangerines and would try to sneak a beer in social settings if you turned your back for too long. A many years sober alcoholic, that was another way to really set Beverly off. That and having him eat too many sweets. The diabetes was in check but she worried about it constantly.
We heard from Beverly that his daughters didn't call or send cards much even on his birthday. In the fifteen years after Ben's stroke, one daughter had only visited one time. We don't know the reasons for that, just that she wasn't around. The good news was, she would send her kids to go visit, and they grew to love Beverly as well, considering her more of a grandmother than their own grandmother. That's who Beverly was. And she raised her kids to be the same. That's her true legacy.
I was so glad when my daughter was able to come along with us, and with my 6 month old grandson last summer to visit with them both. Beverly had been upset that she couldn't attend my daughter's wedding in Tucson the year before to meet all of my family. She couldn't leave Ben and he wasn't well enough anymore for airline travel. She treated my infant grandson, in turn, as her own great grandchild. We were all family and it meant so much to her to finally meet more of my family. Her heart was big enough for the entire world to be her family.
She loved Facebook, it was a way to stay connected, and she was so formal about it that each posting looked like a college admissions letter or a hand written post from 100 years ago. I find I'm worried about my grammar as I write about her. She was a grammar Nazi, and it mortified her to correct people around her in daily conversation. She tried so hard not to, and failed miserably, clamping both hands over her mouth and inhaling "Huh", eyes big and round and eyebrows up in an apologetic gesture. Other times it was "Oh, Oh, Oh"! And an " I'm soooo sorry!" would immediately follow the breach in etiquette.
Beverly once told me that Richard could stay home but that I must come regularly, because every time we went, I found a cupboard to clear out, a refrigerator to clean, and the infamous spare bedroom closet. It was filled with multiple white garbage sacks, which Beverly used when company was coming to rid the rest of the house of all the stacks of paper, which included student homework, bills, insurance information, historical family documents and newspaper circulars, all mixed together to be tossed into the guest room closet. Because her filing cabinets were full. So on one visit I helped her go through to create space in the filing cabinets. It made not one bit of difference. She had no system to keep the clutter at bay. That was Beverly, too.
On another visit, I bought multiple storage containers for food so that she could stop wrapping tinfoil over dishes and ramming them into the fridge. It drove me crazy. On that same visit I could not identify the Bad Smell. I had cleared out every one of the kitchen cabinets, the refrigerator and the freezer and still The Smell. On day three I noticed a lovely enameled pot on the pie table in the kitchen. I lifted the lid and promptly slammed it shut. Beverly had no idea how long it had been there or what it had once been. *sigh* That was Beverly. I worried because she could leave a burner on for hours after cooking. I was concerned that she may burn the house down.
On another visit, I spent an hour with Ben while he and I sorted all the paper from half a dozen sacks of paper. By now, I knew the drill, go directly to the guest room closet that Beverly used to forbid me to open. "Whatever you do, do NOT open that guest room closet", she would declare in my first year of knowing her. But after that, she allowed full access to the mess. It was two feet deep on occasion. School, bills, important paper to be filed and trash. And yet I knew no matter how much I organized, I should expect chaos on each visit. And so it was.
She had a sign on a bookshelf that read "Organized people are just too lazy to look for things". That was Beverly. She lost things. All.The.Time. Next to "the absent minded professor" there should have been a picture of Beverly. She'd invite people to dinner at 6 and end up serving at 8, bringing in the forgotten bread at 9. In spite of that, people loved to come, because she was an excellent cook and a wonderful and gracious hostess.
The week we got the sad news and drove back to Memphis, daughter Lindley kept exclaiming, "I just got her a new purse and some new makeup but I can't find any of the makeup, what do you think she's done with it???" But she was a blessing. A truly sweet and genteel woman of God, a gentlewoman who did not have a mean bone in her body. A server, a nurturer. Just like her kids. I have always loved that about this family. They are sweet and genuine and helpful and kind and loving and generous and fair and fun and playful. I am honored to know them all.
Beverly had grown into the habit of always muttering to herself, probably a result of living with someone who didn't talk too much. I didn't know that when I met her, and being slightly deaf, and not having hearing aids yet, I spent much of my first visit seven years ago trying to get in front of her to "see" what she was saying. I finally gave up, went into the living room from the kitchen and desperately asked Richard "Is she talking to me??". Richard burst out laughing and assured me that she just enjoyed stream of consciousness speaking.
"Let's see now, we have to leave soon and I should get dressed, but I still need to flour those biscuits before hand and I don't want to get flour all over my pants, so I should do the biscuits first and then get ready, and I don't want to forget my earrings this time, and oh I wish my hair had curls, and maybe I'll wear my navy pants and that nice white shirt, which I still need to iron and I wonder if I'll have time for a shower"....... All this about five minutes before we really, really, really should be leaving the house if we had a chance in hell of getting there on time.
We left within two days of getting the sad news to be with her and to say our good byes. She had just been so tired for a week and a half until her abdomen became distended that Sunday, seemingly overnight, and required a CAT scan. And then the diagnosis, completely unexpected. Her scan in November had been completely clear and this was only April. We were devastated. I'm so glad that we were able to just go be with her and embrace her and smother her in love. And be loved by her. She lay on the big king bed day and night. Ben would lay on it with her or not. And throughout the days and nights, people came by to lay on it with her. To let her tell them how meaningful they were to her. For them to tell her how meaningful she was to them. How much each would be missed.
It was a tremendous expression of love. A true love fest. Whenever I caught Ben crying that week I'd ask if he needed a hug, he'd say no, and I'd give him one anyway. So hard to see that wonderful woman slip away from us and to see Ben's raw grief. We'd catch the front desk clerks in the building tearing up. People in the building came by that week, people from church, friends, the son's and daughter's friends, relatives, including Aunt Susanne, her cousin who was as close as a sister. Her old minister from Hernando. All her grandchildren. Her former daughter in law. She was so loved.
I felt our prayers were answered, she died quickly, with little pain, surrounded by family and those that loved her, in her own home. We drove back to Memphis for the second time to attend her too soon memorial service, held on the second anniversary of my own father's death. And then Ben's family finally showed up.
