A Brand New Episode

I was at my wine study group Monday morning. We had just successfully identified (blind tasting as a group) six different wines when my phone rang. Not recognizing the number I didn't answer.
 

Then I received a text message.

"Hi, this is Barbara from the North Texas Heart Center. Your father's here in our office and we need to admit him to the hospital. Could you please call me back? He can't remember your phone number. Thank you."

Stunned, I was.

"How did I get the text message on my phone if Dad couldn't remember the phone number?" I asked myself. "No, no, don't worry about that, just call her back!" So I called and sure enough he was in their office.

Turns out he's been having these dizzy spells. He had one at the Cardio-Vascular Rehab Center where he goes for exercise classes, they checked his blood pressure and pulse. Didn't like it. They put him on EKG. Didn't like it. They called his cardiologist at the Heart Center who told them to bring him over, so a classmate drove him over. The Heart Center put him on a fancier EKG. Didn't like it.

Turns out the electrical leads were fouled on his distributor (as it were) and the ventricles were getting poor electrical impulses and were misfiring. Time for a new electrical system. Time for a pace maker.

About this time I showed up.

After being debriefed, I loaded Dad into the car and we headed across the street to the hospital. Against orders, we drove down the street to his car and got his apartment keys before heading to the ER. He wanted to go home and get some things, but the docs wouldn't hear of it. They saw his condition as critical, the heart could fail in a heartbeat without a moment's notice. He needed to be under constant medical supervision until the procedure.

Needless to say, Dad had a difficult time understanding this.

"I feel OK. I feel just the same as I've been feeling. I don't feel any different." He said the same thing a few summers ago when he was going to have his aortic valve replaced.

"Dad, you're in denial." I was direct.

Of course Dad's big concern was his upcoming Honor Flight trip to Washington D.C. at the end of the week. The doctors were dubious. "It's possible, it all depends on how he comes through the procedure." He pitched every doctor and nurse we saw about how important the trip was to him. After a visit and the door would leave he would look over and say, "I think we made our point." A good salesman never gives up, he just refines the pitch. Dad's technique is to make everyone his friend. Closing the deal then becomes granting a favor. He kept at it all week. Nurses would drop by to say hello even when he wasn't one of their patients.

That evening they gave him a shot of Vitamin K to counteract the Coumedin he takes to thin his blood. The blood has to be able to clot before they would do surgery.

Tuesday morning his bloodwork was fine and he went into surgery around noon.

A couple hours later he was back in his room and he looked and acted like a new man. He ordered some Chicken Soup for lunch and that sealed the deal.

I was talking to Helen later that night and she asked if I thought Dad seemed better after the surgery.

"Immediately," I said. "He looked better the moment we saw him back in the room. His eyes were brighter, his face was less haggard, confusion was gone from his voice."

Wednesday morning they checked the leads, put the pacemaker through its paces and pronounced him ready for discharge. More important they gave him their full recommendation for his trip the following weekend.

Great success!

Like getting the car tuned up and replacing the fuel pump before taking it out on the road.
 

Two Years Out

I hadn't thought about her yet this morning.

It was about 10:45, choir rehearsal was over and we were released into the corridor where the Sunday School class had just released and people were heading into the church. I was talking to another chorister when Dad and his entourage passed by.

He paused for a moment.

"I'll talk to you after the service," he said. "I'm going to stay late a minute and take a picture of the flowers."

"Right."

And then he was off, swept along down the hall.

Right, flowers. September 14. I remembered.

It's not that I don't think about her, I do. I'm always seeing things, hearing things that bring her to mind. We converse frequently. But she did not give me reminder about this day.

My mind wandered as it often does during the service. I always look down from the choir loft. Mom and Dad were almost always in the same pew, their silver hair easy to spot only it's just Dad's now. I think of Mom's ashes in her garden, just outside the new stained glass doors, certainly within range of the organ and choir.

 

The thought makes her present.

Words and pics from Michael Malouf

"Waddington's, Malouf's, Duran's all:
Here are photos of "the ceremony" at the site of Polly's final resting place, as they say. It was very moving, which I'm sure your parental units have already related. Semi-improvisational, semi-planned, it was all really spot on. The "liturgy" was nicely spare--circumstance with a nod to pomp, a cappella songs drawn from a kleenex-marked page in Polly's Book of Common Prayer, a stirring prayer by Mark Anschutz read by De-Don. The improv liturgy was staged so well I can't help but think Polly would have been pleased. My only hesitation was that we poured her ashes from the "original container", possibly breaking one of her cardinal rules, but then we weren't at the dinner table, so may we be granted a reprieve. This family is a tough crowd.
ED. NOTE: We were actually returning Mother to the original original container...

from Michael Malouf

Michael invited you to a Dropbox shared folder called "Polly Paxton Waddington" and left you this message: "Waddington's, Malouf's, Duran's all: Here are photos of "the ceremony" at the site of Polly's final resting place, as they say. It was very moving, which I'm sure your parental units have already related. Semi-improvisational, semi-planned, it was all really spot on. The "liturgy" was nicely spare--circumstance with a nod to pomp, a cappella songs drawn from a kleenex-marked page in Polly's Book of Common Prayer, a stirring prayer by Mark Anschutz read by De-Don. The improv liturgy was staged so well I can't help but think Polly would have been pleased. My only hesitation was that we poured her ashes from the "original container", possibly breaking one of her cardinal rules, but then we weren't at the dinner table, so may we be granted a reprieve. This family is a tough crowd. Hope the photos give you a little taste of the event.

Ashes to ashes

Mother was the impetus behind the creation of the memory garden at St. Michael and All Angels. 

She and Daddy had bought some boxes in the columbarium, but she always liked the idea of her ashes being placed directly in the ground. 

In order to create the space, the church had a good deal of construction to do, and we've been waiting for its completion before burying Mother. She's been in a beautiful blue velvet box on the sideboard since her remains were returned to us over a year ago from Southwest Medical Center, to which she had donated her body.

You could say Mother was the first thing planted in the memory garden: No one else was buried there before her, and there are no plants yet, except for two big live oak trees. Mother's space is midway between them. 

The box of ashes was draped with a lace cloth and placed on a small table near the garden. Father Kevin Huddleston, who said the memorial service for Mother, and whose classes she had enjoyed at St. Michael, read the burial service. None of us knew exactly how this was going to go—Father Kevin kept telling Daddy he didn't know either "just don't forger the ashes!"—but we wanted some personal touches and we decided to sing. 

On Thanksgiving, Mother always had us gather around the piano while Susan played and everyone joined in singing "My country tis of thee," "America the beautiful" and other patriotic songs from the Episcopal hymnal. The ritual always made guests slightly uncomfortable the first time, and none of us started out singing very enthusiastically, but after a verse or so, and a glass of wine, everyone made their joyful noise unabashedly. 

So that's how it was at the burial. Travis and David, at least, are regular choristers and they carried the rest of us singing "Fairest Lord Jesus" before the service and "All things bright and beautiful" afterwards, both hymns chosen for their references to nature. We all remember singing "Fairest Lord Jesus" in the children's chapel at St. Phillip's Cathedral when we lived in Atlanta. And, oddly, I found a folded tissue in Mother's prayer book marking that hymn—but I didn't see it until after we had sung.

There was a hole already dug, and we took the ashes to the grave for committal, each of us taking a turn to put in some ashes, then each of us scraping some dirt over them. It was thick blackland prairie clay, and it smelled good. The brown leaves on the ground reminded me of the woods behind Mother's childhood house on East Clifton Road in Atlanta. 

At the end of the service, Daddy read a beautiful prayer from a book of prayers collected by Rev. Mark Anschutz, a former rector of St. Michael, and a good friend to us all. Father Kevin put the brass plaque with Mother's name on the wall by the garden and we all went out to breakfast. 

The whole event was brief, simple, graceful and lovely, just the way Mother would have wanted it, and yet another lesson from her in how to live mindfully.

 Instead of feeling sad when I think about it, I smile. 

I'm going to get the prayer from Daddy, and put it here.

March 31: Big Britt, Uncle, just called; he wanted to hear how the weekend in Dallas went. He said he was thinking of us Saturday, early afternoon. It's been raining (of course) for days and days in Portland, but that afternoon, he and Liz were startled to suddenly see rainbow "lightbirds" flying around the room. The sun came out briefly and started up the rainbow machine Mother gave Cole some years ago after he had visited the apartment and seen the little rainbows everywhere. He called them lightbirds.