In the months before and after the nursing home stay, many Do-Gooders telephone and visit me in my office to discuss who should be appointed Bea's agent under her power of attorney, even though none of them will do it. They complain about each other relentlessly. They rant about Bea's determination to avoid a life sentence at a nursing home. ("Who does she think she is?" "She must have dementia!" "Can't you do something?") Each wants me to decide her fate, as if I should, as if I could. I cannot. I am only the scrivener. So I remain cordial but guarded as I ascertain there are several factions jostling for key position here, all making scathing remarks about the others, all warning me that each is only "in it for the money," but none willing to step forward. So without wanting to and, perhaps only out of kindness or concern, I unwittingly allow the Do-Gooders to put me in a position I have no desire to be in, but how can I turn away? I really like Bea.
With great effort, Bea comes to me last week and I marvel at her ability to show humor and grace during this most undignified moment in her life. I politely insist that her niece stay in the waiting room while Bea makes her way slowly down my corridor, pushing her walker with me trailing behind, joking as usual. "Hey now, do you have a license for that thing?" Not missing a beat, she replies, "Heh heh, no, but I sure as hell need one...they took my real license away a few years ago and, oh, that almost killed me." I am crushed, usually able to do so much but helpless to remedy this situation.
We sit at my old oak table in the library and huddle close together as her hearing on one side is "not the greatest." I experiment with volumes, testing my voice to get it to a level she'll be comfortable with. Only moments before she arrives, a great-niece telephones to warn me about the niece who drives her to my office and to insist that I call Bea's physician who will ostensibly tell me that she is on "dementia medicine." I refuse, of course. I can only ascertain whether she seems competent enough to me to enter into a power of attorney. I'm not qualified to perform a psychiatric examination. Besides, this great-niece, who doesn't want the niece in my office to become Bea's agent does not, herself, want to be Bea's agent. Oy.
I'm so happy to see Bea, to have her near me, and we have a delightful conversation, one topic flowing effortlessly into the next. She mentions her deceased brother, George, whose estate I managed. George had been a Vaudevillian and a fun character who occasionally visited my office to sing me a few lines and do a little soft shoe on my carpet. Pete introduced George to me.
Pete had a wonderful, dilapidated four-story used furniture store down the street I often visited. I spent hours there, traveling up and down in the freight elevator, getting lost among pieces of old furniture. Each thing has a story, a provenance, and I think now, as I often do at antique auctions, how all these things remain even after we go and yet we are so hell-bent on acquiring them. If you've ever witnessed some of the dramatic contests at an auction, you know what I mean.
Pete once took me to a centuries-old stone tavern he owned. It was nothing but a stone shell filled with antiques--junk mostly, but he said I could pick out any one thing I wanted as a gift. Pete often tried to give me stuff. Once, he even tried to give me his dog. In the tavern, I was embarrassed to take anything, but he insisted, so I chose a small cement dog painted white...in very sad condition. To anyone else, just another piece of junk. He seem astonished and asked, "Are you sure? Why do you want that?" Today, the little white dog named Diego sits perpetually near a wooden bench in my woods. Whenever I sit there, I give Diego a pat on the head and think of Pete.
An hour or two before George passed away, he awoke startled from a dream, and insisted that his sister Bea call Pete and tell him to come right away. She did and Pete did. George told Pete he was about to die, which Pete thought odd. They talked briefly about the contents of George's will (the stone tavern was one of George's testamentary bequests to Pete) and that Pete should take care of Bea after George died. That was it. His business was finished, and he was satisfied. He told Pete the exact time he would die. He closed his eyes and fell back asleep. Pete sat next to him. After a while, George awoke and drew his last breath right on time. Pete was mystified, of course, and his life changed forever. Sadly, only a few years later, Pete died too. He suffered terrible pain from cancer and when he could take it no longer, he told his wife he wanted to go. So he did.
The conversation goes full-circle from George and Pete back to Bea. She remarks that she outlived her husband and all of her friends. And she matter-of-factly adds, "There's no one left...it gets lonely sometimes." Physically, she is very slow and deliberate, her thin, frail body is bruised and twisted, the skin on her arms seems thin and almost translucent, but her expression and bright beautiful eyes show so much....interest, gratitude, sadness, poise...I think of all that she has seen and known in the century of her life, that she was a baby during the first World War and yet here she is, forced to negotiate having her last and only wish come true...to live her last days in her own home.
Whether or not she will know the precise moment, as her brother before her in an upstairs room did some years before, I hope she takes her last breath naturally, without machines, on her own terms and in her own home.
"I'll go soft shoe when it rains
I'll go shuffle trough the aches and pains
Mr. young at heart
That's what I try to be.
They all laugh and cry
They get to feeling better and that is why
If it was good for you
Truly it was good for me."
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