M is for Manuals—Notes for Whoever Draws the Short Straw

 “Manuals?” you ask. How does that word fit my theme for the April A to Z Blog Challenge? At first glance it might seem like a stretch, considering I’m supposed to be writing about the humans, habits, hidden joys and heartaches that shaped my world. But this post is my attempt to write a manual for my own care—just in case, near the end of my days, I can’t communicate with the caregivers and family around me.

Yes, I know none of us can orchestrate how others will treat us when good health leaves the building. But that doesn’t mean I can’t try.

This isn’t my first rodeo with manuals. After my husband’s stroke, I volunteered at a large website for stroke survivors and caregivers. It didn’t take long to work my way up to the management team, even had a seat on the board. With so many people trying to navigate chat rooms, blogs and forums—many of them brand‑new to computers—I asked my boss if I could write a how‑to manual.

And I did. Clear, step‑by‑step directions for people who were overwhelmed, grieving, hopeful and learning to double‑click all at the same time.

Meanwhile, on the home front, I wrote another manual—this one for how to care for Don and the dog if something happened to me. Neither of them could talk, and someone needed to know things like, “Don’t feed them spinach unless you enjoy cleaning up vomit.”

Some might say it was busywork, a way to feel in control while life spun wildly out of it. Maybe. But it was definitely true that I hated the way people made assumptions about disabled people like Don. Too often those assumptions included a belief that a lower IQ comes bundled with a wheelchair and a limited vocabulary.

Depending on where in the head the stroke occurs, that might be true. But my husband’s stroke was smack dab in the middle of the left frontal lobe which is where speech sentences and grammatical structure is produced, causing what is known as non-fluent aphasia aka difficulty getting words out. It’s akin to having a car where the motor and wheels work fine (Don’s brain and lips) but the transmission that makes the wheels turn (or the words to come out) is broken. He knew exactly what he wanted to say but in the 12 ½ years after his stroke and after six years of speech therapy his vocabulary never increased beyond a core of 25 hard earned words.

But his intelligence was untouched, and his desire to communicate never dimmed. He was a born storyteller and he found a way to still be one. That way was to put me in a position where I had no choice but to explain what was on Don’s mind. Like the day he parked his wheelchair right in front of the door to a cigars and cigarettes store and he wouldn’t let anyone in or out. In a militant way only an x-smoker on a mission could do, he held up three fingers while repeating the word “three!” over and over again. This forced me to tell Don’s story to the gathering crowd about how he used to smoke three to six packs of cigarettes a day and he blamed the habit for earning him heart by-pass and a stroke.

 His special shorthand for all he'd gone through since the stroke was to hold up two fingers and say the word, "two then look up me which was my cue to explain that two neurologists had told the family he’d be a vegetable for the rest of his life. The universe response was usually the same: “You sure fooled them!” And it was true.

To friends and family who spent time with Don after the stroke, it was clear that despite his disabilities he was still the same, intelligent and caring person he’d always been. Before the stroke, we used to tease him that we should number his stories because we all knew the by heart. After the stroke that's exactly what he did.

Only someone who knows you deeply can speak for you when you can’t. I don’t have that person in my life, which is why the idea of a manual keeps tugging at me.

It’s embarrassing to admit I’ve already written a 'manual' for what to do after I die—complete with pictures of who gets what—so why not take it a step further and write one for any future caregivers who might cross my path before I kick the proverbial bucket?

A few sample entries:

• Don’t call me sweetie or dear.

• You can never feed me too much ice cream, but never—ever—try to feed me liver unless you enjoy having it spit right back at you.

• Don’t talk religion at me. You take care of my body; I’ll take care of my soul.

• If you set the TV to an old‑people black-and-white channel, sports, or a game show, I’ll consider it waterboarding. If you must leave me with a fictional character as a distraction when you leave, choose the Hallmark Channel so I can binge on happily‑ever‑afters. (I’ll explain why when we get to the letter R.)

So that’s the starting bones of my manual—I’ll finish while I can still boss people around. And if it also reveals a few of the humans, habits, hidden joys and heartaches that shaped my world, then I’d say M for Manuals earned its place in the alphabet. ©

From Missing Words in the Village to Bat-sh*t Crazy Ideas

This post explores the quiet unraveling of verbal fluency in aging—how the right word can hover just out of reach, even when the mind is sharp and the stories are intact. It reflects on the embarrassment of word-search moments, the resilience of written expression, and the legacy of objects that speak when words falter. From a dinner-table stumble to a toy camera turned memory keeper, it’s a meditation on communication, dignity, and the joy of documenting a life in dots, notes, and snapshots.   AI….

I hate admitting this, but I’m losing my verbal communication skills. I word-search way too often—knowing what I want to say but not being able to get the right word to roll off my tongue. For example, my oldest niece and her husband took me out to dinner recently and when it came time to order I couldn’t tell the waitress I wanted a quesadilla. We’d just discussed our choices before she came over to our table, so I ended up pointing to my niece and saying, “She knows what I want.” It was embarrassing.

Google says, “Word search issues in seniors can stem from normal aging, stress, fatigue, or anxiety, and neurological conditions like dementia, stroke, or traumatic brain injury. Other causes include certain medications, hearing loss, and vitamin deficiencies.” If mine is from normal aging then I’m, as they say, screwed because a reliable time machine hasn’t been built yet. If it’s caused by my chronic fatigue from getting up seven to ten times a night to pee, I’m also screwed. I’ve tried two medications for nocturia urination and they have not worked. The doctor says there are a dozen others I can try, but many come with side effects, and the trial-and-error period to find the right one is long and could be painful in parts I shall not mention.  

Sometimes I listen intently to my fellow residents here in the independent living building at my CCC to see if others my age word-search as much as I do. Many of us do it—some far more often than others. The phrase, “It takes a village” is a common rejoinder after a table full of us seniors has helped someone come up with a word that they can’t say. It’s slightly less embarrassing when I’m with peers, but when I’m with younger people, it’s hard not to be embarrassed by a word-search episode. At what point does embarrassment turn into depression—and we just quit trying to communicate because we fear what may or may not come out of our mouths? I’m already to the point where I don’t contribute to some conversations because I’m having a bad “speech day.”

 Word-search issues also aren’t a true reflection of what’s going on inside my brain’s communication center. My writing skills, for example, have gotten better as I age. It’s crossed my mind that one day I could claim I’d had a stroke that left me with aphasia and unable to talk. Then I could carry around a tablet to type my side of conversations. But having watched how people treated my husband in the twelve and a half years after his massive stroke and loss of all communications skills, I know the default impression a non-verbal person leaves is one of a lowered IQ. Don certainly didn’t lose any IQ points with his stroke. Most people were kind—even went out of their way to show compassion—but I’m sure he felt the misjudging just as I could see it. (Note: I'm not saying all people who become non-verbal keep all their IQ points. I'm just saying it's not true in all cases.)  

For me, when my word-search issues get worse, it’ll be like being back in grade school—hearing my mom, in a fit of extreme frustration, call me “stupid,” and teachers labeling me "slow." I had an undiagnosed, mild case of dyslexia back when learning disabilities weren’t part of the national vocabulary. I’ve long since forgiven my mom, but sometimes those childhood scars itch, and I have to resist scratching them until they’re raw. I suppose that’s human nature. No one gets to be in their 70s and 80s without a few scars that itch from time to time.

Time to switch topics. I bought myself a camera. I swore I wouldn’t buy anything else that needs charging—but here I am, adding one more device to my charging station. Yeah, I know, I have a perfectly good camera on my phone and a decent 35mm in the closet. But this camera is special. It’s like the old Polaroids—snap a photo and it prints in seconds. It’s a cheap camera made for kids and it only prints in black and white but it won’t matter for the project I bought it for. (Hint: Now that I’ve used it, I do wish I’d upgraded to a color version.) Both, though, will print photos off your photo using an app and blue tooth. It’s hard to tell if the poor quality of the prints is because I can’t hold my hand steady long enough to click the shutter, or if it’s just the nature of what’s advertised as a child’s toy. Either way, I’m having fun with it. 

What’s my project? Decades ago, I went to an estate sale where most of the items had notes attached that gave the history of each piece. The daughter of the man whose estate was being sold said her 80-something father became obsessed with documenting his belongings so his kids would know what was important to keep. Going through that house was like walking down Memory Lane with a stranger who turned into a friend after reading all the notes. I bought the first pair of long pants the man had worn as a child in 1902—a beautifully tailored, tiny wool pair of knickers. I left his note in the pocket, along with one of my own, when I sold them on eBay in 2020. The woman who received them was thrilled with the notes, and said when she was ready to part with them, she’d add her own. If I were King, that’s what would happen to all the interesting objects in the world: they’d come with pedigrees.

I’ve never forgotten how fun that estate sale was and the older I get, the more tempted I’ve been to write notes for all my possessions. Enter the camera. Instead of writing and hanging tags on every object in my apartment—which even I would find reason enough to think I’d gone bat-shit crazy—I got the bright idea to take tiny photos with my new toy camera and stick them in a blank-paged book. The photos have peel-and-stick backs which makes them extremely easy to tear from the camera and apply. I’m writing next to the photos, but my plan is to get a sheet of color dots to code them as well.

I’ll color-code some items to go with me to Assisted Living or Memory Care—in case I can’t talk by then. I can’t expect my nieces to know what things I want to stare at in my final days and what things I don’t want to risk getting stolen by other residents or staff. (It happens. Things disappeared from both my dad’s Hospice Room and my brother’s Memory Care rooms.)

Twenty-five of those colored dots will go on items I want included in a mock auction—with just my immediate family present, using Play Money. That way, they can decide for themselves what they might want, instead of me earmarking things for certain people. And if no one wants any of it and one of my great-nieces or nephews ends up winning all the bids and reselling stuff on e-Bay? So be it. E-Bay puts collectibles into the hands of people how appreciate what they are buying. I heard about a family who did this, and when I told my youngest niece about the plan, she thought it would be lots of fun. 

There you have it—another rambling Wednesday post. See you next week. © 

Levi and the Music in my Life

Levi had to go back to the vet recently for a recheck of the pus pocket on his lip. It cleared up nicely on the antibiotics but he was still digging and scratching the area constantly. This time we were able to see a 'skin tag' we didn’t see before and it freaked me out when I discovered it a few days before the appointment because I thought it was an embedded tick. Between the veterinary, her tech assistant, me and Levi’s cooperation the vet was able to pronounce that what I thought were legs coming out of the ‘thing’ were not. We were also able to see that the salivary gland near the upper lip where the pus pocket was two weeks ago was enlarged and the vet was guessing it’s plugged and that’s the source of the annoying itching Levi was experiencing. 

She put him on a twice a day drug for itching and it’s been like a miracle. I’ve only seen him digging at his mouth three times in four days since starting the pills. The plan is to reduce the drug down to once a day after a two week trial, hoping to give the salivary gland a rest and chance to correct itself. Going into surgically open it up or remove the gland would be costly and an unnecessary risk at his age. Better to do it with his annual teeth cleaning next summer, if the pills give him enough relief to wait and he's not running a fever. As Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, “It’s always something.” 

Changing topics: I’ve been in the car a lot lately which means I’ve been hearing a lot of music. I don’t listen to it in the house but I’ll explain that later. Yesterday Thomas Rhett came on The Highway XM radio channel singing the last choir of his latest song, “Now I'm twenty-five and I'm drinking wine with my wife at home. Got a couple of dogs and a couple of songs on the radio and we sit around and we laugh about how we used to be when all we cared about was turning sixteen.” The song progressed from looking forward to sixteen, then to eighteen and twenty-one…always looking forward to the next benchmark. That’s what I’ve done my entire life, never happy with the here and now. That is until I got so old the next benchmark is dying and I find I don’t know how to live in the here and now.

Honestly, I don’t understand why people don’t like Country Western music. The songs are mini stories about looking back and looking forward and enjoying where you’re at. They’re about crying and laughing and loving. Sure, a few of the songs are about pickup trucks and hard drinking but more talk about things like skipping rocks on a river and watching sunsets with the one you love. And there’s a lot of practical advice in Country Western songs like in this one Kenny Chesney sang to me yesterday: 

“Scared to live, scared to die

We ain't perfect but we try

Get along while we can

Always give love the upper hand

Paint a wall, learn to dance

Call your mom, buy a boat

Drink a beer, sing a song

Make a friend….”

I don’t listen to music in the house is because 1) it makes me too moody, and 2) I get lost in the song writer’s creativity and that stifles my own if I’m trying to write. Getting lost in their storytelling makes me forget to eat, pay bills and wipe my…dog’s feet when he comes inside. You thought I was going to say something else, didn’t you. I thought about it but I pride myself on not being crude enough that I’d say “wipe my ass” in public. 

When I was in college I took a class on Music Appreciation and we studied classical pieces side-by-side with those written by the new-at-the-time Beatles. The professor predicted that the Beatles music would be around in four hundred years. Years later I got to hear an entire concert of Beatles music played by a full orchestra and I was blown away. The professor was right and I loved his class but the only time I listened to classical music after that was when I was plowing snow. Rachmaninoff’s Flight of the Bumblebee and Beethoven’s 5^th Sympathy could keep me awake like no other tip or trick of professional truckers. I still have my old cassettes but no way to play them without my pickup truck. 

Music played an important part in a different stage of my life. After my husband’s stroke I was back to singing childhood songs in the car everywhere we’d go. Songs learned before the age of five are stored in a different part of our brains, his speech therapist said, so singing them is a way to try to kick-start lost speech to come back. It didn’t work and after a year that "homework" faded out of our world but for the rest of his life Don often belted out, “Jesus likes me. Yo, you know” and every time I’d reply, “I think Jesus loved you when you were a kid." At that point he’d switch the only other song he could (almost) sing, Happy Birthday. Of all the things I’ve written over the past nearly two decades of writing on the web, my favorite humorous essay was about Don and his two songs. If interested, you can read it here. But be warned, the word ‘ass’ does come up. ©

Another $100 Day

My new haircut.

Every so often I have what I call a $100 day. It happens when I schedule Levi for an appointment at the doggie foo-foo beauty spa and me for a haircut on the same day, with lunch and shopping in between dropping off my schnauzer and picking him back up again. On the way home we stop at Starbucks where he gets treated to a free pup-a-ccino and I get a caramel macchiato. It all might sound like a yuppie way to spend the day until you picture me driving around with a bag full of poop in my cup holder. I had walked Levi before dropping him off, his first one of 2015, but the park was technically still closed for winter so there were no trash contains available to leave the poop behind. Trust me a plastic bag does not mask all the smells that come from inside and I was afraid to put the bag of poop in the trunk for fear I’d forget about until I found a cop standing next to my car with a search warrant on the suspicion there might be a dead body inside. Could happen if it was summer.

When I picked Levi up one of the “stylists” was shaving a tiger cat into a lion cut. I’d never seen anything like that in my life. The cat was like a bean bag, so relaxed and seemingly unaware that two people were pulling it every which way but off the table as one was shaving it down to the skin. The  pom-poms on its feet and tail already were perfectly shaped and the long hair on its neck and head had already been blow-dried and brushed. Poor pampered baby. Who does that to an animal who loves to groom itself as much as cats do? Now you know why I call the place a foo-foo beauty spa. They are known as the best in town. If it was a clothing store, it would be Macy’s compared to my hair salon which would be J.C. Penny’s. 

The place I had lunch was new to me and is one that specializes in breakfasts. I had seen an interview on local TV about the place and their famous red velvet pancakes. I didn’t order them because I couldn’t bring myself to put that much red dye in my body and risk the gods of chronic hives crying out, “Oh, boy, thank you!” The omelet I had was good but I probably won’t go back because the way the place was set up it didn’t lend itself well for customers to have conversations with one another like a place down the street that I call the Breakfast Only Café or even the Guy-Land Cafeteria. Secret revealed: I don’t go out to lunch just because I’m hungry. Sometimes I just want to hear a human voice that doesn’t come from an electronic devise. 

During my travels through my $100 day I stopped at Lowe’s and ended up with an unexpected tear in my eye. Crap! It was such a simple thing, a split second that changed my good, the-sun-is-shining mood to a sad reminder of the past. A man in my age bracket cut in front of me to get a cart from the cart lineup then he realized what he did and he said, one word---“oops”---and went on his way.  “Oops” was without a doubt the most frequently used word in my husband’s very limited, post-stroke vocabulary. Sometimes it was a one word apology and sometimes it was a one word comical punchline to something someone said. Talk about fifty shades of grey, Don could do fifty of shades of the ‘oops’ word. The sad reminder at Lowe’s didn’t last long; I went directly to the paint department where I picked out some paint chip samples to bring home. I don’t plan to paint anything anytime soon but paint chips are like happy pills in my world. I have two shoe boxes full of them. Crazy, I know, but don’t most people do something that others wouldn’t understand without reading a dissertation on quirky habits?

If I spend enough time in the car, like I do on $100 days, I’m sure to hear a song that has me changing the station with the speed of a crow plucking out an eyeball. Okay, I’ve never seen a crow do that but if it was inclined to disfigure a person I know it could do it pretty fast. Anyway, the song is Garth Brooks’ That Summer. It’s about a eighteen year old who gets a summer job on a ranch and a widow with “leathery skin” who teaches the kid all about sex---you guessed it---that summer. I’ve written about this song before but today it reminded me of a story about widow who lived in my cousin’s neighborhood.

It was a story told by some grown adult men I know who in their younger years were introduced to sex via a line formed outside the widow’s bedroom door where she took them (and others on) one at a time. Boys from twelve to sixteen and they talked about the experience like it was a fun coming-of-age event in their lives. Can you image that happening now? The woman would be sitting in jail and the boys would be testifying in court about how they are scarred for life. What happened to her? Parents got wind of the whole thing, talked to the police but all that happened is parents were told that "boys will be boys" and to keep their kids away from her house. Times sure change.

I don’t know how I can finish off this post so that the ending ties back to the beginning unless I say the widow from my cousin's neighborhood missed her calling. She should have been $100 hooker. ©

Panda Bears, the Widow and her Aphasia Book

Since the birth of the twin panda babies at the Atlanta Zoo in July I’ve been a daily fan of the panda cam. I’ve watched them grow from 4 ounces, 4.5 inches long to eleven and half pound butter balls. Until this past week they’ve divided their time between an incubator and their mother as the zoo keepers swap them out every few hours and sublimate their diet with a bottled milk. The mother panda has never had them both at one time until this week. She's been such an affectionate mother with her cubs. She carries them around in her mouth like cats do their kittens and you’d swear she’s smiling when they nurse. She cuddles with them even when they aren’t nursing, she bathes them and  the babies often look like they're sucking their paws/thumbs. It’s been such a sweet and angelic story to follow from the hairless and ugly little creatures they were at birth to the beautiful, fur-balls they are now. Now that they are spending more time together they attempt to play even though their walking is wobbly and they’re not in control of where they’re trying to go. The twins are too cut for words.

I had just gotten into making teddy bears before my husband’s stroke. I still have a stash of exotic fake furs and bear joints in the basement because I never gave up the dream of making artisan bears with personalities. And I have a collection of teeny, handmade and signed bears that measure under three inches tall. I love the micro-mini bears the best. The smallest I’ve ever achieved is five inches tall and he looks like a bulky ox next to my treasured, tiny favorites. The panda twins have gotten me thinking about making bears again. I wish I could find a good panda pattern. It’s been so long since I’ve tried alternating patterns that I’m not sure I can do it anymore. The only panda bear pattern I’ve found they want $17.50 for a downloaded pattern and the reviews say there are no instructions or how-to photos to go with it. I can’t believe that! I used to be able to exchange them free with other bear makers or buy them for next to nothing. So far, I’m not willing to pay $17.50 for a piece of paper to come out of my printer. But I may weaken and buy myself a Christmas present.

Being a widow and no longer being a caregiver to a severely disabled husband sure freed up a lot of time in my life. This point has really been brought home to me as I work on the book I’m writing for the National Novel Writers Month. As I read over the seven years’ worth of journal entries I made as a caregiver/spouse I can’t believe the range of emotions I recorded. So many things I wrote about I’d forgotten about doing. Studying those journals has made me laugh and cry and both be ashamed and proud of myself for how I handled life during those difficult years. I believe in this book because I believe that I can help others by sharing the raw emotions of what a couple goes through as they search for acceptance and a new normal after such a life-altering medical crisis. I will get the rough draft done on the book by the end of the contest, I just hope I don’t lose my mojo for getting the draft turned into a “final product.”  And maybe that’s why it’s a good thing that the panda bear pattern I lust after costs so much---if I don't buy it, it can't distract me from my do-good book project.  

But the worry-wart in me keeps wondering if I'll ever be able to do everything I've put off doing while I was busy living a different existence---paint again, make bears again, keep writing and be totally happy again. Now that I have the time but not the husband to share my joy in doing these things, do these goals from past years still ring true? Or maybe that's the way it's suppose to be. Maybe we're supposed to keep on wishing and hoping and dreaming about that next project just over the horizon until the day we die. Even if that next "project" is just trying to figure out how to steal the jello off our future roommate's dinner tray at the nursing home. Without wishes and hopes and dreams would we ever accomplish anything? I don't think I want to slow down long enough to find out. ©

The bear pattern I lust after.

 

One of my micro-mini artisan babies.

The Widow's Birthday Card

 

My computer has been crashing when I open up too much stuff at the same time. It’s been this way a month or more and the computer guy that checked it out says I need a new one, that he can’t fix what’s wrong with my old baby. Then two days ago I thought it was finally time to plan its funeral in the land of obsolete equipment. It was turning itself off within a few minutes of turning it on. Long story short, after two days of hand ringing I figured out the surge protector was cutting in and out and that was turning the computer off.  A new surge protector later and my old baby gets a reprieve. I hate the idea of shopping for a new computer! I don’t want to leave the land of XP for Windows 8 but it’s got to happen one of these days. When am I going to get too old to navigate the learning curves that come with updating computers?

When my computer was down these past two days I was going through withdrawals from spend my mornings online. So I started sorting out a couple of boxes in the garage and I ran across a birthday card I’d given Don on his 50^th birthday. I didn’t know he’d saved it. Inside of the card I had written the following:

Dear Don,

From the beginning of life to the end, we use our birthdays as benchmarks to our accomplishments. By five years old we’ve learned to walk, talk and go to the bathroom by ourselves and those who love us celebrate these things and all we have to look forward to in life.

Our thirteenth birthdays mark yet another milestone, an era when our potential and promise are formed and when we’re ready to embark on a voyage into adolescents.

Like everyone else, we took the passing of our sixteenth and twenty-first birthdays for granted, like they were our God given right.  Now, we smile at the memories of those carefree days and sometimes we wonder why youth is wasted on the young.

Then came our thirtieth and fortieth birthdays and with each we questioned where we’d been in life and where we’d hope to be.  The joy, the celebrations of our birthdays diminished over those years as we forgot how to examine the accomplishments we’d made---learning to stand on our own, career building, the friendships we’d been able to keep through the years, and the mental strength we’d honed.

Like all the others, our fiftieth birthday marks another bank of accomplishments. We’ve just come through a tough decade in our lives. An era of losses---our parents, our once perfect health and our youthful looks, dreams that can never be. All these losses have the power to make us stronger and more appreciative of everything we still have. It’s a time for reevaluation, for setting different goals. But most of all, fifth birthdays are a benchmark to celebrate life and the fact that we’ve still got 30 or 40 years left before we forget how to walk, talk and go to the bathroom by ourselves.

With all my love, Jean

It’s funny how a widow keeps finding things and people who pull her back to forgotten memories and events. I hadn’t seen that card for over twenty years. I also found it on a day when I had met a guy when I was out walking the dog who knew Don from Don’s trips around the neighborhood in his electric wheelchair. He knew who I was from seeing me pass by with Don in our Traverse but I wasn’t aware of him. He said he thought Don left behind a great legacy, a legacy of showing others how to accept living with a disability with grace and making the most of what he had. The neighbor also told me a funny story of how one time he was having a birthday party and Don cruised right into the outdoor event like he’d been an invited guest and before they knew it, Don was entertaining everyone with his aphasia driven antics. That was Don, the guy whose stroke taught him how to be a mime. Running into this guy was like getting a new surge protector for my computer. He made Don come alive to me again. And that reminded me of how much I still miss him! ©

A Ride Up and Down Memory Lane

When my brother was four-five years old, my mom took us downtown and during the course of our shopping trip the three of us got on a crowded elevator. My brother was never a shy or coy kid and when he had a question to ask he’d belted it out and that day, in between floors, he was curious. “Momma,” he said, honestly dismayed and pointing to another person on the elevator, “Why doesn’t that lady wash her face?” My mom was mortified but the black lady laughed. It was the 1940s and this anecdote speaks volumes about the times and the fact that a kid from the suburbs could be almost old enough for kindergarten before seeing his very first non-white person.

My second memorable elevator ride was in the Empire State Building---memorable because it was the setting for a full-blown panic attack. Not my first, but the worst one of my entire life. It was in the 1950s, a time when I was in love with art deco architecture and I had been looking forward to this trip to the public observatory at the top. Unfortunately, once I got up there I found out that I had no more love of heights than I did for being locked inside a “windowless box” grinding and groaning its way to the top of that beautiful building.

Twenty-some years later, when Don and I was in Chicago about to get on the elevator at the Sears Tower, I could feel another major panic attack coming on so I made an excuse and refused to get in. My ancestor, Elisha Otis, founder of the Otis Elevator Company, was probably rolling over in his grave over my behavior. But Don had a different reaction because as it turned out that elevator, which he got on to but I didn’t, got stuck between floors and it took a half hour to free him and the other passengers. He got off it in awe of me, thinking that I was clairvoyant and saw that event coming. I never corrected that impression. We were newly in love and I wasn’t about to start punching gems out of my princess crown.

It was shortly after Don’s stroke in 2000 when we had the next memorial ride on an elevator. Don was being transferred from one facility to another and the ambulance-cab driver in charge of transferring Don didn’t get his wheelchair far enough into an elevator and the door shut on his toes. The elevator car moved down several feet while Don’s foot was going upward before the driver realized what she’d done and pushed the emergency stop button. Then it took awhile for us to get Don’s toes uncaught from the rubber door seals because the door wouldn’t open in between floors.

My last memorable elevator experience happened at a Christian college where Don was taking speech classes. He’d spent the morning trying to teach himself how to swear; specifically to say “Jesus Christ!” to someone who’d cut me off in traffic only it kept coming out as “Jesus Crust.” He knew it sounded wrong but he couldn’t figure out how to say it correctly. Don also rolled the words ‘Jesus Cuss’ around on his tongue a few times and finally went back to ‘Jesus Crust’ all the while giving me ‘The Look’ that said, “Help me out here, woman!”

“Don’t look at me, Buddy-Boy,” I told him. “I’m not helping you learn how to swear.”

Finally, the conversation was all but forgotten until we were on the college campus. As I stood there waiting for the slowest elevator on the face of the planet, I remarked to Don, “Boy, is this elevator slow.”

“Jesse Crust!” he swore back in front of a hall full of students and a few professors.

Who’s going to make me laugh now? Who’s going to look at me like I still have a few rubies left in my princess crown? Who’s going to be my best friend, my favorite companion, my sounding board? Everything I see, everything I do takes me on a ride up and down Memory Lane. No one told me that grief takes you back before you can move forward. Or maybe it’s just me…….©