Ten-Finger Exercises

Brief shots

Here are a few poignant scenes from the lives of hospice patients:

Edna is 94 and lives in a classy, assisted living facility. The room has twin beds, one ofwhich she is lying in, and the other made up with an olive silk bedskirt and a tone-on-tone silk screen print coverlet. A large window stretches across half the wall, divided into multiple panes. Edna is dying, and her son stays with her every day, maybe even some nights. He is out of the room when I come to visit, but his cell phone is on the window sill. His laptop is open on the coffee table, his leather coat tossed across the back of one of the pair of olive velvet chairs. Next to the laptop is a large, hardbound book about birds of the Northwest, and on top of it, a pair of binoculars. Outside the window is a narrow band of woodland flanking a creek, a yellow barked willow just beginning to leaf out, two lilac colored azaleas startlingly bright against the dark stone path.

Frank is a man in his 70's, appears to be in constant pain but refuses all pain killers, even Tylenol. "Everybody I've ever known who took that went crazy," he says. "One woman even howled at the dogs." The social worker convinces him to try just a little. He splits one table into four pieces, and takes one. "Better get out of my way. I'm gonna vomit any minute," he warned her. An hour later, it was still down, but he was still not sure if maybe it would be safe to try a whole pill.

Joan lies in bed in a nursing home, showing no sign of being aware of my presence. This is my fifth visit, and they have all been virtually the same. Today I talk to her about the beautiful spring day, and surmise what a day like this might have been like for her twenty years ago. I ask her if she'd like to pray, and think she may have nodded slightly. Maybe. When I finish, she clearly mouths the words, "Thank you."

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Darn! I posted this before 9 and completed it later. It didn't show up, and ruined my blue month!