Let me tell you a story 'bout a man named Jed

Chaotic would be a good word to describe life right now.  No matter where I look in my house, there is stuff everywhere.  Major yard sale this weekend so I have cleaned out cabinets, drawers, closets, you name it, it's been sorted through.

Good memories....being sifted, sorted, stored.

I can't get too melancholy though, when this leaves the driveway this morning - a chair that didn't make it in one piece and can't get taken to the dump till tonight so it had to go with my husband to work this morning.

My husband, "Jed."

Peace,

Ronda

TJOLC or.... it's time to disembark the ship

The wheels have been in motion for this leaving comfortable since last July, always in the background.  Sort of like being on a ship, on deck 15 and the guts of the ship, the engine room, the boilers, the bowels of the vessel are hidden from the passengers view, underfoot, hidden, silent.  But somehow the ship moves, from one port to another while the passengers sleep and eat and play.

That's how this journey of leaving comfortable has been.  This change, this transplant, this....this...journey.  Maybe the wheels have been churning for this change long before July of 2012.  Maybe the wheels have been churning since 1959, 1966, 1945, 1848.  Who knows?  But more and more I see (?) or feel (?) or sense (?) or just KNOW that Someone has been driving this ship, Someone has been at its helm, Someone has been navigating when I was sleeping, when I was eating, when I was playing, when I was grieving, when I was laughing, when I was rejoicing.

Someone.

Someone who has known from before I was born every day of my life before one of them came to be.

I don't know if I'm down closer to the engine room now and I can see the workings of making a ship run or if I'm on deck 15, high up on the bird's nest, and see the new port is coming up in the horizon and I can see land, but it's coming into view much faster than I thought (or right on time if you're Someone) and it's here.

We're getting ready to step off the ship, enter the new port and live another part of the journey on a new ship, yet to be named.

The ship called Comfortable is being disembarked and I'm sad.  And I'm glad.  And I'm excited.  And I'm anxious.  And I'm sad.  But most of all,  I'm ready.

It's been a good Ship.

Peace,
Ronda

Just Write

When Change Comes, The Conclusion

My Mom's birthday was coming up that November and we were all worn out.  Grandpa had indicated to my mom, when she suggested that maybe by spring things will be better, that he didn't know if the two of them (he and Grandma) would be there by spring.

On the way home from the doctor appointment where it was suggested Grandma be placed in a nursing home, my mom and her younger sister discussed how to tell their dad the news.  My aunt suggested seeing another doctor, a family doctor she knew well from working in the small hospital where Grandma was taken the day she was hurt.

The two of them made plans for the next day when they would take Grandma to his office and sit in the waiting room until he could see them.

When he eventually was able to see her and examine her, he suggested  to admit her to the hospital and take her off all her medications, including the Haldol.  He told my mom and my aunt that doing so may very well kill her, but they were at their wit's end, not having any other ideas or help, so they agreed.  Grandma was admitted.  It was a Wednesday night.  My mom and my aunt went home.

On Friday of that week was my mom's birthday.  She got up and went to the hospital to see how her mom was doing.

As she was walking by the nurse's station to my grandma's room, the nurse said, "Happy Birthday, Rosemary."

My mom stopped, looked at her and said, "How did you know it was my birthday today?"

The nurse said, "Your mom told me."

Mom rushed into Grandma's room, her mom's room, and there her mother sat, up in bed, smiling, happy, eating her breakfast, herself, with hands unclenched, holding the utensil.


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Grandma did go to a nursing home for physical therapy from the hospital.  But she was home by Christmas and the Mom my mom had seen in August before the "disturbance," had returned.  We did lose a part of the Grandma I knew before the accident.  We lost a part of that busy woman, although she still remained busy no matter how difficult it got for her in her later years.  (The stories my  family could tell about the difficult places she was able to get her wheelchair and a basket of laundry would have you shaking your head and laughing out loud).

She never regained her short term memory.  We had to practice and practice and practice patience when stories, names, and weekly events or tasks would have to be continually repeated.  She could tell you where she went to school as a girl, who her teacher was, what her ma and pa drove, but she couldn't remember if she ate breakfast that day.

But that was ok.  We did lose a part of a Grandma that once was, but we gained a Grandpa that was waiting to Be.  You see, through all of that, the accident, the "disturbance", the haldol horror, we witnessed some miracles.  I saw a mute man speak and become alive.  Grandpa never had another headache a day in his life after his wife Betty was hurt.  Never.

He went on to be one of the kindest, gentlest men I have ever been privileged to know.

I tell my cousins born "after" the accident that they had a different set of grandparents than I had.  In some ways I was jealous - there is a story about a fudgesickle, two in fact, that my younger cousin Cody got that me and the older cousins would have NEVER gotten back in our day with the "Before" Grandma.  But that's ok, that's a good change.

My mom and her siblings had to grieve the loss of their mother not just when she died, but when she was hurt.  I've always felt a sadness for them in that loss.  At the time, during that six months from June to November, I'm sure many people may have thought to themselves it would have been better to have Grandma just taken to heaven at the scene of the car wreck to avoid all the pain my family was going through.

My Mom's younger sister, a new mom at the time of the accident never had a mom she could call when the baby wouldn't quit crying or was running a temp.  My aunt who was driving the car herself had to deal with her own grief, her own recovery, both physically and emotionally.  My Grandma's sisters could tell the funny stories from their childhood with Grandma in the room, but there was a delay in her response to the laughs and the stories that wouldn't have been there had she not been hurt.

Grandma became aware of her deficits to some point and I think it caused her to second guess a lot of her memories.  If she were asked about a cousin of hers or an event from her distant past, she would look to others for reassurance she was on the right track.

I wonder how she saw her life each day.  Did she wake up wondering what in the world happened?  How did  I end up like this or did God just mercifully take away that question from her mind?

We won't ever know, and it really doesn't matter now.  Change came and we were changed.

Eleven of her twelve grandchildren at her funeral

My cousins, the "after" grandkids got to have grandparents that doted on them hand and foot.  There was loss, yes.  But change means loss.

Change doesn't come when things stay the same.

Change comes in hard ways sometimes, even when we're not looking.  Sometimes change comes when you're not looking, grabs you by the shoulders, smacks you in the face and forces a life, or lives, headed in one direction to do an about face and head the opposite direction of where you thought you were headed.

Change can hurt.

Change is good.

Change is never easy.

But who said life was supposed to be easy?

Jesus didn't.  Remember.... in this world you WILL have trouble.

Grandpa went to be with Him in 2003.  After Grandpa died, his wife Betty had to sometimes be reminded that he was gone.  It was sad to watch her sit and think about where Kenny might be and then even sadder when she'd ask, "Kenny, he died, right?"  At his funeral, Grandma sat at the end of the pew, in a wheelchair again, not because of anything else but old age.  I sat behind her at his funeral and watched her push her chair, slowly back and forth, always moving, never keeping still.

Betty went home to be with Him and Kenny, in 2006, twenty eight years after the accident that changed her life and ours, in her new body we are all promised.  I imagine her eyes bright, equally centered, her ears perfect, her beautiful smile, and the joy each of them now have, in the home of the King.

Grandpa and Grandma at my High School Graduation Party

Grandpa and Grandma with Grandpa's siblings and half siblings.

Grandma and her sister Mag

Grandma and her sisters

Me with my two Great Aunts

Grandpa and Grandma on their 50th wedding anniversary with all six of their children from youngest to oldest.

Grandpa lending his carpenter skills during a church renovation project

Me, holding my first daughter, with Mom and Grandma

Look at her smile!  Still smitten with him!

The End

The Beginning of the Story

When Change Comes, Part Four

This is a recollection of an event that happened in my family when I was a girl.  Several years ago, I sat down with my Mom and pieced together the timeline so to bring a childhood memory to my adult understanding.

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After the"disturbance" that caused her to be sedated and put on regular doses of Haldol, an antipsychotic medication that was fairly new to US markets at the time of my grandmother's recovery, Grandma's condition began to rapidly deteriorate.

On Labor Day weekend she was allowed to go home to start weekend visits, but the effects of the medication (in my nurse opinion NOW and my family's opinion THEN) caused to her to be greatly agitated and instead of being able to walk into her home she entered in a wheelchair.  By the end of September she, and those taking care of her, were suffering greatly.  The doctors had suggested taking Grandma home permanently might help her to get better but she continued to take Hadol every four hours.

One of the greatest side-effects she suffered was an inability to remain still.  Grandma, prior to the accident was a woman who never sat down from the time her feet hit the floor in the morning till they came off the floor to crawl into bed at night.  She was constantly busy, doing something.

We knew Grandma to be a busy person, but this woman, this medicinally induced woman who constantly had to be pushed around and around hers and grandpa's ranch home in a wheelchair, and would beg us grandkids to push her, promising us five dollars, ten dollars, if we would just push her one more time around the house; this was not the woman any of us knew. I remember her having a stutter like speech:  "pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease just one more time.
Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepppleaseppppleaseppppplease."

This was not the woman her daughter had laughed with in her last days at the hospital before the "disturbance."   This was not the woman who laughed at herself when told she had the wrong name, or couldn't remember what she ate for lunch.

This was someone else.

This behavior went on for several months.  Grandma was discharged completely in the early fall that year, and my mom, to help with my grandma, because grandpa was still working, took a leave of absence from her job as a teacher's assitant to look after grandma during the day.

Grandma, or this woman in Grandma's body was wearing the pants off of anyone who spent more than a few minutes with her.  By November she was really, really bad.

My mom was tired.  My grandpa was tired.  My mom's siblings were tired.  My dad was tired.  We were all tired.

It wasn't fun anymore pushing this crazy woman around and around in a wheelchair.  She became constipated and subsequently impacted.  She developed a tremor, a BIG side effect of the medication we know NOW, in her left arm.  She clenched her fists so that her nails dug into her palms causing them to bleed.  She'd lost a considerable amount of weight

At a doctors appointment that fall, the doctor could only suggest possible nursing home placement.  Grandma, who was in the room at the time my mom told me, had been swaying in her chair the whole time they were talking to the doctor.  When the doctor suggested a nursing home, my mom saw Grandma stop swaying and a tear roll down her cheek.

We all wanted normal again.  Grandma most of all.  We all wanted our Mom's back.  My brother and I and my dad wanted my mom home.  My mom wanted her mom back, the way she was.  Even if she were just the forgetful grandma and mother, it was better than who she was that fall.

To be continued.....

The Conclusion

When Change Comes, Part three

This is a recollection of an event that happened in my family when I was a girl.  Several years ago, I sat down with my Mom and pieced together the timeline so to bring a childhood memory to my adult understanding.

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When my grandmother, who was 55 years old at the time of the car accident that left her brain injured and affected her short term memory, started to come out of the coma she had been in, we were all so happy.  I remember visiting her in the hospital and finding it funny that Grandma would call me by her sister's name, my brother by her brother's name, my dad she'd call her Pa.

This is normal behavior as the brain begins to heal after a traumatic injury.  Grandma couldn't remember what she had for breakfast after the tray had just been taken from her room, but she could remember and tell stories from her childhood that I had never heard before.  It was a lighthearted time when Grandma would call me Mag, her older sister, and I would say, "No, Grandma, I'm Ronda, your granddaughter."

"Oh, that's right," she'd say, laughing.  And just minutes later, she'd be calling me Mag again.

The short term memory was something that would be forever affected, up until she passed twenty five plus years after the accident.  After I'd grown up and started having children, I would bring them to visit her and Grandpa and she'd always, always, need a recap of which child was who, who was the baby, who was the oldest.  It wasn't fun anymore, but you go on, you accept the things that can't be changed, even when the change has brought so much good to a family.

Grandma was healing, she was doing better, plans were being made for her to be discharged from the hospital.  Mom's last visit, before the journey into despair and weariness really revved up, was one of great joy.  There was a piece of her Mom missing now, but her Mom was still there, inside that bruised and broken body.  Grandma was able to feed herself and could walk with help.

Two cosmetic injuries Grandma suffered in the accident were part of her right ear had been mangled and her right eye was pushed in so that she would be forever cross-eyed on the right.  Her right eye, the iris, the colored area, had been pushed to face the nose.  You could still see her pupil, but she could never voluntarily move the eye to follow movement.  The ear had been surgically repaired, but did not look as it once had, but later could for the most part, be masked by her hair.

Mom had enjoyed a good visit with Grandma and returned the next day expecting to have another good day, but when she got to the hospital the nurse stopped her and told her that Grandma had not had a good night and they had had to sedate her.  She had had a "disturbance."  We never were told what exactly happened, but my Mom suspects that Grandma, unaware of the cosmetic changes to her face, looked in the mirror sometime that evening or night after mom left and had a meltdown.

We don't know for sure, but whatever happened, the mother who had just the day before was full of life and laughing with her daughter, was now sedated, lethargic, hardly able to speak.

The days of great despair had started...

To be continued.

Part Four