Month: March 2021

“In Good Hands” is the title of a post to this blog which appeared on June 6^th of last year.  It is the story of my first day of cancer treatment in July of 2011.  Following that first visit to the treatment center at Kaiser Woodland Hills, I was overwhelmed with gratitude for the care, the comfort, the peace, and the assurance of hope from these amazing and dedicated front-liners in my life.  What could I do to express my appreciation?

In the early days they hit it hard, twice a week with two different chemo therapies and other powerful drugs to counter the inevitable side effects.  Two days later was my second treatment, on a Thursday.  At the entrance to the hospital was a farmers’ market, with growers selling fruits, vegetables, flowers, baked goods, and the work of artisans under those blue pop-up canopies.

Perfect!

I bought about three dozen beautiful organic plums and passed them around to the receptionists, the people in triage, the pharmacy unit, the back office medical assistants, and the nurses on the front line in the treatment center.

Since that first week of treatment, there have been more than three hundred visits in almost ten years, and now there is settled and familiar routine for this incurable, but treatable cancer.  Twice monthly my blood is drawn at the local Kaiser clinic on a Wednesday; on the ensuing Friday I show up at the hospital for chemo.  This is likely to continue for many years, as the Lord allows.

When the day of treatment changed, the farmers’ market was no longer an option; but within a mile of the hospital there is a TJ’s, a Sprout’s, a Whole Foods, a Vons, and a Ralphs.  Besides, the fruit of the pop-up vendors is generally overpriced, and I have become a good shopper.  Oh, occasionally I will spring for Honeycrisps, if they drop to $1.99 a pound, which will set me back about $30.00.  Once I ordered three dozen of those unbelievable pears from Harry and David, which required taking out a “second” on the house.

However, most of the shopping is from the right-hand side of the menu. You can get three dozen “Cuties” for about $12.00.  When the Fuji or Gala apple varieties are at $0.99 a pound, it will set you back about $15.00.  Last week was bananas; at $.59 per pound, the tab was $7.74.

Over three hundred trips!  Over three hundred bags of fruit!  As in most things, it is not what it costs, but what it’s worth; and the people at Kaiser are worth the world to me.  They have become friends.  They have become family.  And I have never considered that I might stop the fruit deliveries. 

Years ago my daughter asked, “Dad, are you the only person in the world who actually likes going to cancer treatment”?  She noticed something – that I would bound out of the house.  She knew that I stopped for my fruit on the way to Woodland Hills.  She noticed my enthusiasm, and it wasn’t just because they were keeping me alive.  She noticed the deep-down joy in my connection with the caregivers.

And there are two reasons why it has always been fruit, and not bagels or donuts or other less healthy munchies.

Number One.  They ask me not to.  These heroes at Kaiser are health care professionals and want to stay health themselves.  They always say, “Thank you” for the fruit, and “Thank you” that it is fruit.

Number Two.  This might sound a bit mystical, but I just might have someone looking over my shoulder.

As a kid I spent many weekends, holidays, and summer vacations at my grandparents’ four-acre farm in Northern San Diego County, the avocado capital of the world.  In addition to his avocado grove, granddad also had orange, peach, fig, pear, and apple trees, as well as a large truck garden and a stand of sweet corn.

Most of the avocados went to market; but some of the avocados and most of the other fruits from his grove and garden went into crates and loaded into the cavernous trunk of his Plymouth business coupe.  Several times a year we would deliver this provender to a local orphanage, and they always thanked Mr. Johnson for filling up their larder. 

And he did not bring his leftovers.  My granddad was a man of faith, often quoting his favorite passages from Scripture.  In the Pentateuch, the people of ancient Israel were taught to tithe their best offerings, their first fruits.  For these trips to the orphanage granddad would pick only the unblemished.  He would raise the fruit to his face and breathe deeply, knowing which pieces would be the sweetest and the freshest.   

At the market on Friday mornings of treatment days, I think fondly of my grandfather as I hand-pick each apple or peach or pear or banana.  In memory of this dear man who taught me about avocados and tools and introduced me to the Bible, I can do no less for my cherished caregivers at Kaiser. 

Another Sweet Goodbye

When my mother was a little girl, her mother called her a “caution,” because she got into one scrape after another – like the time she was four years old and decided to lock my grandmother in the basement.  Audrey lived to the ripe old age of ninety-nine, and she never stopped being a “caution.”      

When she moved to her new skilled nursing quarters at the age of ninety-seven, she discovered that they had some rules, and that chafed her.  For example, she was not allowed to leave her room to wander the hallways alone.  She did more than fight that rule.  She plotted a jail break, got herself dressed, rolled out the walker, sneaked out of the building, and traveled across the grounds to the independent living apartments, where she knocked on the door of her lifelong friend Grace.

Because of her escapade, they put a sensor on her easy chair that sounded an alarm at the nurse’s station if she got out of the chair.  Audrey did not take that sitting down.  She was always good with tools and fixing things; it didn’t take her long to disable the gadget.  It would not be the last time she tried to beat the system.    

Her frustrations grew as she needed more and more help:  help walking, help dressing, help in the bathroom.  She was in increasing need of a wheelchair.  Many of the seniors were physically fit but haunted with dementia.  Audrey was just the opposite, and that really contributed to her restlessness.  She was a quick-witted woman trapped in a body going bad, and this was especially evident in the dining hall. 

Audrey’s table mate was Edith, a strong, vigorous, and mobile woman of ninety -two who was lost and lonely in her own mind.  The only thing she could say was the number “seven,” which she repeated on an endless loop: “Seven … seven … seven … seven …”  She would say it softly, barely above a whisper; then loudly, and with inflection, turning the heads of everyone in the room.  Had it not been pitiable, it would have been a stand-up routine.

One day I was with Mom at lunchtime.  She was annoyed with Edith’s mantra and asked me to sing to her while she ate.  I was only a few bars into “His Eye is on the Sparrow,” when I realized that Edith was not saying the number “seven” anymore.  She was quietly mouthing the same words I was singing.  Somewhere in the labyrinth of her memory she had recaptured the words of a long-forgotten hymn. 

Audrey was brought to tears.  She told me that her friend’s few whispered words reminded her of the thing she feared the most – that she might also lose her memory and slide into the indignity of dementia.  Happily for her, and happily for us, she did not grow dim.  Even as she became more physically frail, she remained funny and feisty, scrappy in spirit.

She had an exercise routine that consisted of a daily walk.  In addition to her walker, she also had an aide who held onto her belt to prevent her from falling.  One of her legs was a little weaker than the other.  When her tour guide told her that she was listing to the left, she quipped, “That’s because I am a democrat, young man.”     

On another visit, she was alone in her room, sitting in the wheelchair.  The orderly had taken her to the bathroom but had not finished getting her dressed.  There was a cord attached to the back of her blouse with a safety pin.  That cord was also attached to a “beeper” on the handle of the chair that would alert the staff if she tried to get up before they returned to dress her.  She was turning and stretching this way and that, trying like mad to reach the pin and take it off, looking for a way to work around an alarm, as she had done before with her easy chair.  I told her to wait a minute and ran to the nurse’s station to tell them I was in the room and would make sure she did not get up, and possibly hurt herself.

When I returned, Audrey had figured out how to outsmart another system.  She had unbuttoned her blouse, taken it off – pin, cord, and all — and stood up.  There she was in the middle of her room, teetering unsteadily back and forth, wearing nothing except for an adult diaper, half off her hip.  I told her, “Mother, this is not a pretty sight,” referring to the fact that age and gravity had taken their toll on my mother.  A naked ninety-eight-year-old woman is a lot like a Picasso painting in which none of the woman’s parts are in the right places.  Her response was one for the ages:

“Son, I birthed you.  I have seen everything you have.  Now, you have seen everything I have.  Deal with it!”

No, Audrey did not go quietly into that good night.  She raged against the machinery of the world and her keepers right until the end.  She lived so long and so enthusiastically, it seemed as if she would always be around; and indeed, she did last a long time – just short of a century.  She was not cut short.  We were not robbed.  We cannot complain.

Still, when she became bedridden…

Audrey was luckier than most of the other residents, many of whom never had a visitor.  She had a constant stream of family in her last days.  My brothers and their wives, Liza and I and our kids, and several of our kids’ cousins kept the vigil.  But you are never quite ready for the call you know is coming.

They said it might be a matter of hours.  My brothers had spent the morning at her bedside.  My wife and I and our daughters arrived for the afternoon shift.  Audrey was lying in repose.  Her pulse was weak.  Her breathing was labored … and slow!  I sat on the edge of her bed, held her hand, and sang to her, just as I had done when putting her to bed when she lived in our house.  My wife and daughters joined in.  We sang for at least two hours, prompting each other on the words to a hymnal and the Broadway songbook — Audrey’s favorites.  The nurse checked in regularly and told us that Audrey could probably hear us.    

Her breaths became fainter and farther apart.  Just when we thought she had breathed her last, she came back for more air.  We kept calling for the nurse, and we kept singing.  If Audrey did hear us, we wanted to serenade until her last gasp.  When she had been still for several minutes, we called again for the nurse who confirmed that she had passed away. 

We were not aware of the exact moment, but somewhere between “How Great Thou Art” and “There is Nothing Like a Dame,” my mom drifted off into eternity.  We were all weeping; yet for me there was peacefulness and joy in the room that defied all comprehension.  When my father died, I was holding him in my arms in that very moment.  Thirty-two years later, here I was, holding my mom’s hand when she died.  They brought me into this world, and I ushered them out.

What a privilege!

As we sat there, and our daughters reminisced about their Grammy, a smile spread across my face, and I began to chuckle.  I suddenly remembered this game that my mother used to play with my brothers and me.  You see, she loved See’s Chocolates, and we would often invade her apartment, hoping to find the delicious plunder, which she used to hide from us.  And I wondered…

Still holding my mom’s hand, I reached over and opened the drawer of her bedside table.  And Voila!  A one-pound box of “assorteds.”  My daughters were horrified when I pulled it out, opened it up, selected and ate a dark chocolate peanut cluster – one of Audrey’s favorites. 

“DAAAAD!  HOW CAN YOU DO THAT?”  Oh, the gnashing of their teeth!

In my defense I offer up two justifications for my behavior.

#1       My mom was never going to eat it; and on that, my logic is unassailable!

#2       My parents shared a great sense of humor, able to laugh at each other and at themselves.  Ted would have grinned from ear to ear.  And if Audrey had been present at that moment, she would have feigned umbrage and then said, “Pass the chocolate.”

Audrey Marie Johnson Piatt did not want to set the world on fire.  She did not seek fame or fortune.  She was a devoted wife and mom with an incredible work ethic, a life of integrity, and a keen sense of duty.  She carved out a career and was widely admired by scores of faithful clients who admired her for her talent as a designer/decorator.  She was a resolute woman of faith, praying daily for those around her.  Her last outing was Christmas Eve 2002, four months before she passed away, at my brother’s house for the annual Piatt Family Holiday Homemade Pizza Party.  There were about sixty of us, four generations of a close-knit clan, all leading good and productive lives, loving Grammy, loving each other.  That is her legacy.