A Parting in Progress

She and I were never close. Mom said the problem was that I intimidated my sister-in-law. Me? Intimidating? How on earth could that be? I am so “down-to-earth,” so non-threatening, harmless. Why would anyone be intimidated by me? I still don’t know the answer to that question.

Last week my nephew contacted me to let me know that his mom was in the hospital. She was in a coma, but nothing like he had ever seen before. She has been diabetic for a lot of years now and on dialysis for a number of those years. She didn’t take care of herself to control the diabetes. I wonder if she thought, “That happens to other people. It’ll never happen to me”? Mark thought his mother was dying. He was worried, afraid.

 I visited my sister-in-law in the hospital. I thought if she heard my voice, saw my face, it might help bring her out of whatever was going on. We have been at odds enough that her old feistiness might push her to respond. She opened her eyes at the sound of my voice. She looked at me. Her eyes looked terrible, but I didn’t say anything about that. She started to stir in the bed. But she didn’t speak. I didn’t stay long because there just didn’t seem to be anything that I could do.

It was told to me that Deb’s sugar level dropped to 10 and when she was found in that condition, they had no idea how long she had been at that level. The doctor feared brain damage. After a few days he ordered an EEG to see what was going on in her brain. 

For whatever reason, a feeding tube was inserted. I asked my brother if his son—who would not leave his mother alone, had been at the hospital since Saturday—had told them to do whatever they had to do to keep his mother alive. He said yes. 

It’s so hard to let go of someone who is dying. I understand that. But a feeding tube only prolongs the suffering for someone who is never going to recover, is never going to be more than a body in a bed. I don’t want that for myself. Why would I want that for her?

A few days ago Bill, my brother, talked to me. He said Deb woke and talked to him. She was so weak it tired her to talk much. But I think it gave him some hope that she would recover. In my mind I knew it was not that she would recover, but that moment of clarity that happens so often just before a person’s condition takes that turn for the worst that leads to their demise. Her health is just too fragile to rebound. 

My brother contacted me yesterday (May 15, 2013). Deb has been removed from life support. Hospice has been called in. Social services support has told him and his children that they are doing the right thing. I know this is a difficult thing to do.

My niece was there yesterday, at the hospital. I was glad to hear this. Her father and her brother need her to be there. She was nowhere to be found when our dad died in 2009. She was nowhere to be found when our mom died in 2011. Her grandparents. They were always there for her when she needed someone. And she failed to show up when they passed away. If she didn’t want to be there for them, why wasn’t she there for her family who needed her? And when she needed her family. I still do not understand that. 

So, here we are at the end of my sister-in-law’s life…her last days. She and I were never close. Her life was difficult, more than challenging. I hope for her to have a better place on the other side of the River. Deb, go in peace.

(c) 2013 ~ Cathy Thomas Brownfield ~ ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Short post for a long thought

What is respect?

What is self-respect?

© 2013 Cathy Thomas Brownfield ~ All Rights Reserved

Humming

Why didn’t I think of this before? Oh. I did. I just have never found time enough to do that, mostly because I’m always doing things that others think I should be doing instead of what I think I should be doing.

I want to plant a hummingbird garden. 

Those tiny birds are a wonder. I wonder how they beat those tiny wings so fast and if their hearts ever skip a beat the way they dart around. I wonder if they see colors since they don’t care for yellow or white, but like bold colors like orange and red. Ah, but they like pink, too. They don’t care all that much for roses or geraniums but gravitate to wildflowers and native flowers like columbine, coral bells, gladiolas, lilac, Mexican sunflower, red hot poker, scarlet runner beans and trumpet vine; those flowers that produce more nectar on which they feed. They apparently prefer jewelweed and cardinal lobella, which are wetland plants. 

For nesting, provide fuzzy plants like cinnamon fern, pussy willow, thistle and dandelion or other materials they may use for nesting. Pruning plants to promote flower growth rather than wood growth will encourage the hummingbirds to come back to your house. Planting patches of flowers, and flowers that don’t all bloom at the same time also will enhance a hummingbird garden. No insecticides should be used.

Hummingbirds eat spiders and insects. They bathe in shallow water, even if it’s just a few drops of water in a leaf. How economically and environmentally-minded they are!

Indigenous to Ohio, the ruby-throated hummingbird is found only in the Western Hemisphere, advises the ODNR (Ohio Department of Natural Resources). It is the smallest bird, weighing less than an ounce. Males are about the weight of a penny, females a little more. They summer as northerly as Canada and Nova Scotia, as easterly as the Atlantic Coast, as westerly as the central plains of the Great Plains and southerly to the Gulf Coast and the east coast of Texas. They are more of a tropical bird, arriving in Ohio between mid-April and mid-May and are gone, mostly, by mid- to late-August. They are the only hummingbird that nests east of the Mississippi River.

No wonder I like hummingbirds. They are solitary creatures. But they also are aggressive and challenge the other birds at the feeder. They nest near woods and/or water. Their feeding times are early morning, late evening and just before a major thunderstorm.

Some facts about ruby-throated hummingbirds:

·         * Males and females are together only for mating.

·         * Female rears the two offspring alone.

·         * Females are on nests by mid-June.

·         * Two broods may be produced each year.

·         * Two white eggs are the size of sweet peas.

·         * The nest is half the size of an English walnut shell.

·         * Life expectancy is 2-3 years.

The recipe for making food for hummingbirds:

1 part sugar to 4 parts water.

Boil mixture for 2-3 minutes. Let cool before filling feeder. Store unused portion in the freezer for later use. You may add a little red food coloring if you like, but it is not necessary. Do not use honey because of potential issues of fungus.

When the food in the feeder becomes cloudy or dirty, get rid of it, clean the feeder and provide fresh nectar for them. 

As I read this information about hummingbirds, a plan is formulating in my mind. A pool of water surrounded by wetland plants…Already I have honeysuckle twining on our fence. There is plenty of dandelion around. Where did they come from, seemingly overnight? But the issue is the dogs…who think they can tramp on anything within that fenced in backyard.

(c) 2013 Cathy Thomas Brownfield

Finding Myself

I’ve decided it’s time to “find myself.”

Back in the 1960s, when Women’s Liberation was a big news item on a regular basis, women burned their bras in protest. (Nuf said. You can draw your own mental pictures and conclusions.) Women abandoned their husbands saying, “I have to go find myself,” leaving their mates scratching their heads trying to figure out what that meant. 

I was just a kid. I didn’t understand it, either. Didn’t grownups get to do whatever they wanted? They didn’t have a boss telling them when to peel potatoes for supper, wash the supper dishes, clean their rooms, take a bath, wash behind your ears. They got to make all the decisions and everyone else had to live with those choices. Right?

NOW I understand.

As a young wife I considered the lives of the older women who influenced me. One of the things I noticed was that they, for the most part, sacrificed so much for their husbands and families. Someone had to make the final decisions about everything. Some women “wore the pants in the family” because their husbands wouldn’t, couldn’t or shouldn’t. Some were partners with their husbands, discussing things and deciding together, and still others were martyrs, believing they were earning Purple Hearts because they never took off their wedding rings from the day they were slipped onto their fingers and the vows were taken, as if their peers would admire them for their commitment to a bad relationship. Or perhaps that thought never occurred to them. Maybe it is something that happened when they were struggling just to survive, to raise their children, to just make do…

“When I was growing up,” he said, “we learned about making do.” He sounded like he believed she knew not one thing about ‘making do.’

“I thought ‘making do’ was a temporary, not permanent, state,” she replied. “And when I can’t use the washer, do you expect me to take the laundry down to the creek and beat it clean with rocks?”

He didn’t appreciate her wit and sense of humor at all. Maybe it takes one to know one.

When a woman is kept busy running a household, raising children, and full time employment outside the home in addition to being the family supervisor, there is little time for her tend to her own needs. Then work in some elderly parents with health issues requiring dependence on their children. If her life partner doesn’t step up to help her, she becomes lost, but she’s too busy to notice…until Empty Nest occurs. After 20 or 30 years of being family supervisor—aka Mom—everyone expects her to suddenly flip a switch to turn off Mom mode and go on her merry way.

“You don’t have children to take care of now,” he says. “You can go get a job.”

Will he never understand? Her parents passed away. He had just expected her to pick up and keep going without taking healing time. But maybe she was taking too much time to heal…or maybe she was healing from a lifetime of being too busy to think about her own needs, and now she needs the time to get back on her emotional feet, no thanks to him.

The Glass Menagerie. I want to read that again. I read it in college for the freshman English series. I think I have a story idea from that play and the class.

And I have decided…I am on a journey of self-discovery, to find me. What is fact? What is fiction? About this blog entry, I mean. Only the author can say. And it’s time to write that story.

© 2013 Cathy Thomas Brownfield ~ ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the flag

Of the United States of America

And to the republic for which it stands

One nation

Under God

Indivisible

With liberty and justice for all.

                There are too many people saying our nation is falling. When the people still can say what they think without being detained, incarcerated, imprisoned or put to death—disappearing forever…When we still reach out with compassion to help our brothers and sisters, our friends and neighbors and, yes, strangers who have less than we have, I have a hard time believing the American Spirit has been strangled and mangled to death.

                For a lot of my years people have underestimated me. What I learned from that is that I have the element of surprise on my side. Who thought I would ever go to college? I wasn’t from higher society, the daughter of a doctor or a lawyer. I wasn’t an athlete. My high school guidance counselor didn’t pay attention to anything I was doing until my senior year. THEN he said I couldn’t graduate with my class because I had too many majors and not enough minors. Really? Yes. Really. I did graduate with my class. I got a minor in science and I worked a job half-days through the Cooperative Office Education curriculum. Not too shabby for the daughter of a laborer who only went to the eighth grade.

                Who knew, with a high school diploma and the freshman English series at Kent State Salem, I would build a journalism career beginning in radio news (WSOM-AM600), a weekly newspaper (Lisbon Lantern), the Morning Journal (seven days a week), a weekly called Canfield News, community/social editor at Salem News and even publisher of my own weekly (Lisbon Messenger which didn’t fail. I suspended pressing because of family priorities.)

                Who knew I would go back to Kent State and complete a BA in two years (requiring 18 credit hours per semester for four semesters) as I raced against the clock to graduate before Dad died so he could see one of his children graduate from college. (He died six weeks before I graduated.) Even I did not know I would graduate with distinction and honors. And while I worked on that degree I never missed writing one weekly article for Family Recovery Center. Yes. Not too shabby at all, this Yankee woman.

                I remember walking into one of my college classes. The discussion was about patriotism and patriarchy. I said I was a patriot—I love my homeland. I am so grateful for the life I have here.

                The professor said, “Perhaps by the end of the semester we can make you a human again.” This same professor who verbally ran down the America I love spoke with his heavy accent. He came to America, an Arab from Morocco, for what reason? (Go ahead…speculate.) One of the remarks he made spoke of “sleeper cells” throughout the United States who wait to be instructed to activate. They live here, enjoying our good life, and wait for instruction to kill us.

                I don’t know what is ahead for our nation—or our world. I remember a song…”Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire.

I know the American Spirit is alive and well. I know when the time to stand together arises our people will stand shoulder to shoulder.

                The world beyond our borders wants what we have. They envy us. They hate us. But they will do anything to come here. They will do anything to take what we have. And if we let them take what is ours, maybe we deserve whatever happens. I don’t believe our people, true Americans, will let them. They underestimate us. We have the element of surprise on our side, should we decide to use it.