Back when I was driving all over creation seeing patients in 4 counties, I found myself one day seeing a lovely lady in a small NE Oklahoma rural community. Her name was Mary Catherine and she was living in a storybook looking home! It had white clapboard siding with pinkish red shutters and a porch swing on the west side of the porch. There were flowers lining the stepping stone walkway to the antique front door. It had an oval beveled glass front and was painted just a shade lighter than the shutters. A late spring breeze carried the scent of peonies to my senses and made me smile all over. Visions of my Grandma's flowerbed jumped forefront to my thoughts. Then I heard her, "Come on in, door's unlatched."
Oh! The inside was as charming as the outside. There was flowered wallpaper from the '40's on the walls and there was a china cabinet with pink, cranberry, and green Depression era glass inside. There she sat in her overstuffed winged back rocking chair that also had a flowered print on it. She had just the prettiest white hair all pulled back and up, and she was wearing a flannel rose-colored gown with a ruffled apron with maroon rickrack on the top of it. She was holding her TV remote in the pocket on one side and the panic alert button for help, if she needed it, in the other pocket.
"Well, come on in, nurse. As you can see, I'm surrounded with all these dishes and antiques, and I'm sorting out what goes to which child and grandchild and niece or nephew. I've got a friend who is going to come over after a bit and put them in their designated boxes. You'd think that this would depress me terribly bad, but it has been a good morning. I'm enjoying looking over each piece and remembering when I got it and what was going on when me and Henry bought it. Bless him. He's been gone nearly twenty-five years now.
"I know you have come to check my vital signs and see how my ticker's doing. But, before you do anything else, I want you to sit on that embroidered footstool, not that leather one, it's wobbly, and let me inform you about how the cow eats the cabbage 'round here!
"I've been up there in that big city hospital for several days and about a month ago before that. You see my heart is wearing out. I've died twice and they shocked the snot out of me and brought me back both times! I've told them as plain as I could before I left that ICU room that they're not to do that anymore. I was already having the blessing of seeing Heaven and feeling the peace and love that we don't have here on this side, when BAM! I'm back in my old clay body and feeling all that pain and bother. Lordy!
I'm too old and feeble for a heart transplant. I don't want any surgery or another pacemaker or another valve replacement. I want to go on. It'll happen again and, when it does, if anyone does that Code Blue stuff on me and puts me on that dang breathing machine, I'll haunt them when I do get to die!"
I listened and wrote everything down. My supervisor had already told me that she didn't want any CPR but that she was home to die. But, this dear woman needed to spit that information out and make sure that everyone knew she meant business.
Her heart was very weak but her spirit was strong, and she worked hard on those belongings. A friend and a neighbor and a niece came to help her label all of it and box it up before I left while she was dozing quietly in her chair.
I was scheduled to visit again the next day and help her with some laundry and some skin care as well as the assessment of her overall status. I'd planned to go out and cut some of those flowers and put them in one of her antique Roseville pottery vases for her chair side table. But as I was making out my schedule for the day we received a call from her family. The neighbor found her that morning in her chair. She was gone.
I couldn't help but smile. She and Henry were together again.
How would you spend your last hours?
This is a chapter from my book, Transitions: A Nurse's Education about Life and Death
Available on my website: www.ladyhawkpublishing.com and Amazon
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