a holiday tale for 2016
I never met Amos but here’s what
I’ve been told...
About seventeen years ago, and both recently retired, Amos
and his wife moved to their brand new home. Perhaps it was their first brand new home. A pleasant place – just this side of
heaven – its fresh stucco painted white and its sizeable back yard sloping up
to a green belt, shaded by an ancient, pre-subdivision black oak that seemed to
cascade stubbornly hard-to-rake leaves heavily late in the fall. Amos maintained the house with paint and
polish, and the yard, planting and replanting flowering shrubs and annuals, ensuring
adequate water and mulch. The
result? A bit of springtime stretching
into sultry summers and many evenings watching moonrise while enjoying the
warmth of lovingly caressed hands.
Come November, he’d rake those leaves.
At some point, Amos’s wife passed. I’m not sure how long they were married, but I know that if
my wife passed, I’d consider folding my tents and calling it a life. Clearly I’m not Amos.
Amos turned to the community in which he lived staying
active at the lodge on various boards and councils and bocce tournaments. He
kept his aging fingers on the pulse of his little way station ‘just this side of
heaven.’ He organized
transportation for those who couldn’t otherwise make an appointment or,
perhaps, shop in 30-mile distant Santa Rosa. He participated in a kind of meals on wheels – maybe he
started it – wherein those laid low by an illness or a loss had something hot
delivered until order was restored in their lives. A fixture in the community, I picture him on morning walks
greeting and being greeted by whomever else was out. I suspect that both
handshakes and hugs were common.
That’s the way it is in a community.
Perhaps a dozen years into Amos’s time
in the neighborhood, circumstances turned the way circumstances do. Gradually, Amos transitioned from being
the support to being provided for.
Instead of driving people in to town, he found himself being
driven. Instead of preparing meals
for the infirm, meals began coming his way. I have no knowledge of how Amos felt about his freedom to
assist being replaced by his need for assistance. I do know – people have told me – that folks signed up to
take him places and bring him food.
There was a waiting list.
One June, a few years back, Amos became housebound. In late autumn, as leaves rained off
that old black oak and scuttled down the back yard slope, someone – family, I
suppose – decided that caregivers should be employed to assist twenty-four
hours a day. Because the following
is part of what paid elder care does, many aides spent hours listening to
records or watching television or swapping stories with Amos – or reading or
dosing off while he rested – waiting for the moment when he needed assistance
to the bathroom or help with nourishment.
At the same time, Amos’s focus during those days turned to
ensuring the comfort and caring as much as he could for those whose charge was
to care for him: MTV rather than college football; frozen pizza rather than chicken
soup. Or so it was reported.
This I was also told: It was December 24th,
Christmas Eve, four years ago.
Shift change happened around 2:00 PM. His afternoon assistant was a young mother who lived on the
other side of town. She had two
toddlers, each probably bubbling with the anticipation and excitement that only
that night’s visit from Saint Nick could bring.
Around five, the young mom began to stir in the kitchen,
preparing Amos’s evening meal, when he called to her from the guest bedroom where
his hospital bed was set. “Julia
(I’m making up the name) Julia, come here.”
I suppose Julia came right to his side. “¿Está
bien, Amos?”
“I’ll be fine, just fine,” he said. “But you. It’s a special night and you have two little ones at home.”
“Están con su papá.
Son bien.”
“They should be with their mother.”
“No puedo. Mi turno no…
no…”
I picture him raising a tired hand and, with a bluing finger
pointing for emphasis: “Usted será. You will. Now please go on home for this evening. Gracias.”
In the ensuing moments, surely with many conflicting
thoughts racing though the young mother-caregiver’s mind, the front door quietly
clicked closed as, in the dusk of this special night – Christmas Eve – ‘Julia’
headed back across town.
In Amos’s Little village, emergency
service response is, at most, three-and-a-half to four minutes from phone call
to arrival.
Amos called 911 shortly after that door clicked shut.
Medics did not revive him.
How do I know all this? Through a fiduciary, we purchased Amos’s
house. Over the past couple of
years, countless neighbors have shared their stories, often reminiscing about a
handshake or a hug. Two – maybe
three – have spoken about that Christmas Eve. Others have asked if we knew Amos personally.
I’m beginning to think I can answer, “Yes.”
© 2016
Church of the Open Road Press
