PeaceBang

Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant

June 13, 2008 on 6:22 pm | In Mind of the Minister, Reminiscence, Unitarian Universalism |

She stopped attending church around Christmastime because she was tired and dealing with some tough family issues. I said, “My dear, you deserve a break. You’ve been working full-time for this church for forty years and given your heart and soul to it. Go with our blessing.”

So she rested, and slept a lot. I’d call to check in. “Vicki, I just can’t get it going like I used to.”
“That’s understandable,” I said. “On my best days I can’t get it going like you used to. Do you realize what a whirling dervish of focused energy you’ve been for decades?”
We’d chat and I’d catch her up on church goings-on. She was my North Star.
She understood church better than almost anyone I’ve ever known.
We missed her a lot around the office. Before she took this “sabbatical,” she had been there at least three times a week. She was involved in everything. She had a furiously passionate view on everything. She read everything the UUA put out, attended GA something like 35 times, and knew what was going on at every congregation in the district.

She was devoted to what she called “the care and feeding of ministers.” I had been warned before I began my ministry at this parish that she would be a troublemaker to me. We laughed over this recently and I remarked that I was still waiting for the trouble to start.

She was my spiritual bodyguard for six years and although we argued, she was the one to constantly remind me to take care of myself. Sometimes she offered specific commandments on how I should accomplish that. “Take a walk and don’t bring your cell phone!” she’d demand. “Watch some TV tonight and TAKE THE PHONE OFF THE HOOK.” “Get out of town — we don’t need you here,” was her response when I considered attending the Festival of Homiletics in Nashville in 2007. She was my Worship Committee Chair and she simply informed me that they would fill the pulpit while I was gone, waving away my thanks.
She insisted that I take the Sunday after Easter off. She was there to assist at every wedding and every funeral: opening the door, showing the florist and caterer around (okay, sometimes ordering them around), turning on the sound system, thinking of things I might need before I knew I needed them.

I never asked her to, but I know she ran interference with parishioners who complained about decisions I made; with far less patience and sensitivity than I would have, perhaps, but trying to protect me from “petty complaints from people who don’t know their ass from their elbow when it comes to our tradition.” Try as I might to pry them out of her, she remained tight-lipped about details. “If it IS a real problem, Victoria, I’m sure you’ll hear about it. In the meantime, you have enough to do. Let me deal with the dummies.” I’d say, “C’mon now. Just because someone doesn’t agree with me or you doesn’t mean they’re dummies” And she’d respond in an arch tone, “I’ll think about that and get back to you.”
When I was involved in helping a family through a particularly sensitive crisis, she managed to get the word out without exposing confidences. “Step it up, people, and run your own church,” is the sort of thing she’d say. “The minister isn’t God here.”

At congregational meetings she held a minority viewpoint on most matters, and for that alone the church will sorely miss her. “LISTEN, FOLKS,” was her customary way of beginning a phrase that would express her rockbound view that we were heading straight to hell in a handbasket unless we listened to her. We’d all sit up straight and listen. The vote often did not go her way but she never quit the church. Many people actually feared her — especially newer folks who didn’t know what a solid gold heart she had beneath the crusty exterior, or who had never eaten her chocolate cake or her ham and beans.

“He couldn’t organize a one-car funeral” was her disdainful assessment of anyone whose leadership skills she thought were less than up to par. But she did not hesitate to lavish direct praise on those whose dedication and work she admired. As I remarked recently in a tribute to her, her dedication to the church was such that she had earned both bragging and bitching rights to it.

By March, when she still wasn’t rested enough to get back to church and I was obviously in denial, someone noodged her to go to the doctor. She hated doctors and had avoided them for decades, cracking, “Why in the world do I need to pay someone to tell me to quit smoking!??” I think she smoked at least two packs of Maverick 100’s a day.

It’s a good thing that this noodging church friend was so persistent. She finally did agree to see a doctor for that nagging cough and arthritis pain and was sent for an MRI immediately, which showed a cancer that had already progressed significantly through her lungs and into her back. All her doctor could offer was radiation to shrink the tumor in her spine so that she might be more comfortable. She, who had always cared for everyone else, realized right away that she might have to begin to accept help herself. It was her last great work of spiritual growth.

A team of church friends mobilized right away. They took her to doctor’s appointments, and on a few emergency hospital visits when the pain got too bad to bear. One friend escorted her out of the hospital waving “SORRY” behind her frail back for the insults she had hurled at doctors and nurses at moments of pain and fear during her stay there. Church friends brought her food, pink gerbera daisies and picked up her laundry to do at their own homes because she had no washer and dryer. They even bought her cigarettes, because as she said, “Why quit now, for God’s sake?” They made visits to the Social Security office and tracked down her Medicare benefits for her, purchased her additional health care coverage, sent in a plummer to fix the toilet, drove her several hours out of town to visit her son, and purchased airline tickets for her daughter to fly in from Florida.

She was always a very proud woman, raised on a farm in Arostook County, Maine and tough as nails. She didn’t have indoor plumbing as a child and comfortably used a chamber pot until the last week of her life. In the winter, she did not use heat but kept up a steady fire in a wood-burning stove with recyclable items (she recycled or composted everything), dressing in layers and keeping warm upstairs under layers of wonderful old quilts.

She appointed me her Health Care Proxy in early April and we talked about the fact that she wanted to die at home. No hospitals — she bitterly hated them. No nursing homes. At home. Cigarettes and black coffee available at all times. Everything on her own terms. No hospice. No strangers coming in. When I washed dishes for her she fussed at me: leave them alone or I won’t be able to find anything. Always her terms.

We gave her The Good Egg Award at the Stewardship Celebration Dinner — her last appearance among the wider church community, and established a GA Scholarship in her name. She stood to accept the award and then made an unexpected speech. In her direct way, she told everyone that she was dying, that she wanted to say goodbye and thank you, and that for those who wanted to know if there was anything they could do for her, yes there was. “Love this church.” I was holding the microphone for her. “And take care of this lady, because this is going to be hard on her.” I put on my best neutral “pastoral care” face but I think the tears streaming uncontrollably down my face probably gave me away a bit.

As she got sicker, we adjusted the expectation that all her care needs could be met by non-medically trained folks. First she allowed the Visiting Nurses Association in, thank God. And then the hospice branch of the VNA. Pharmacare delivered to the house. Meals on Wheels came in. A wonderful nurse named Mary Ann. A social worker. Just a few days ago, she agreed to the first visit from a home health aid although she was very resistant to being attended to by strangers. She did it for those of us who loved her, who were afraid to make her pain worse while changing a shirt or a Depends, who were terrified at the prospect of dropping her or touching her painfully swollen ankles by accident. “Will you do it for us?” I asked. She closed her eyes and nodded.

Eventually it became clear that she would need around-the-clock supervision. The care team confronted the fact that her own home was an impossible environment to provide sufficient care in. Church friends offered their home. She could move into the guest room and church caregivers could stay in another guest room. She would have her own bathroom on the same floor, a washer and dryer in the house, a dishwasher, and working shower. She could smoke on the porch; some of our church guys could put together a wheelchair ramp in no time at all to get her down the one step if she needed it.

This past Monday she and I discussed it. She sat thoughtfully, cigarette in hand and agreed that when things became “unmanageable,” she would be willing to go. It was not,after all, a nursing home or a hospital. We agreed on a code word for when things became unmanageable. If she said, “STAT” to me, it would be time to move her out.

The STAT moment came yesterday in the morning during what the hospice nurse called “another pain crisis.” I got there just after the nurse had administered more medication and sat on a footstool in front of her, both of her hands in mine. “Is this STAT?” I asked. “Is it time? Are you ready?” She nodded yes, weakly. By the time the ambulance arrived she was in a blissfully deep sleep brought on by the medication. Free from pain. But I had to wake her. “Honey, they’re almost here to take you to Karen and Larry’s,” I said. “I’ll be right behind you in the car. I’ve got everything you need. Don’t try to get up. I just wanted to wake you early enough to have a moment to say goodbye to the house.”

With every last ounce of strength she had, she struggled to rise, swinging her legs one by one over the side of the bed. “No,” she said. And then “No!!!” I had tricked her. I had drugged her and lied to her. I had been plotting this for weeks. I tried to reason with her as she lurched slowly through the kitchen. “We discussed this, remember? Remember our code word?” She wept and reached the sink where she began to try to wash dishes. “I’m sorry, I know…” I said helplessly to her back. “NO, you DON’T KNOW,” she said. There were daggers in her voice.

The ambulance drivers arrived– two young females.

As she allowed herself to be strapped gently onto the gurney, she hollered and railed at me. She called me obscene names. She spat further accusations about my motives, my betrayal, my conniving. “We can’t take her if she doesn’t consent to go,” said the ambulance driver. “I understand,” I said. “So don’t.” But then I remembered that the hospice nurse had found her just that morning sitting half slid off her kitchen chair, a cigarette lighter in mouth, just about to flick her Bic without a cigarette end to put it to –and I became very frightened. I prayed for guidance and immediately received an image of a mother bear with a cub in its mouth, shaking it.

“I agreed to be your health care proxy because we trust each other, you ungrateful brat!” I yelled. “You can stay here and set yourself on fire and break everyone’s heart who loves you or you can come to the home of friends where we can stay with you 24 hours a day and keep you comfortable, safe and manage your pain. We have busted our butts for you because WE LOVE YOU. No one is STEALING FROM YOU, I am collecting your medication!” She hollered and I yelled back until the ambulance drivers were in tears and begging, “Stop, please stop.”

I waved at them to let us go on a moment more, I would explain later that she needed to rage rather than to grieve, it was always her style, and I needed to be the villain for this part of the story because there needed to be a villain.

“Are you ready to go? Do you give your consent?” asked one of the young women at last, and she swallowed and nodded. “Just keep HER away from me,” she said, gesturing at me. “If I see you again, I’ll kill you.”
“You won’t get that close,” I responded. “I’ll throttle you first.” I knew that was a come-back she would have ordinarily loved. As I hurried to get in my car, I thought we’ll laugh at that line in the next life, honey babe. She called me honey babe sometimes.

I followed close behind the ambulance and minutes later I was sobbing in the kitchen and trying to get a grip on myself to help unload her supplies and go over her medication protocol for the rest of the team. She was having a cigarette outside — still strapped to the gurney, mind you. At last they rolled her in. “How are you feeling now?” one of the gals inquired and she said with customary sarcasm and surprising energy, “Have you ever heard the expression ‘mad as a wet hen?’” All three of them laughed, along with the parishioner who was there to welcome her to her home and lead them down the hall.
They gently transferred her to a hospital bed in a clean, blessedly quiet room, tucking her into fresh sheets while I quietly placed photographs of her family and get-well cards around where she could see them when she opened her eyes.

When all the technicians had gone, I sat by her side in a chair as she rested. She eventually opened her eyes and we held hands. She was peaceful, relieved, comfortable. “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she said. We exchanged loving words. Nothing that hadn’t been said already, just nice to say again for the last time. The dog barked once and she opened her eyes in surprise. New sounds. And then she drifted to sleep.

Our DRE came and spent long evening hours with her, and then another church friend arrived at midnight. She had one last pain crisis, trying in her agonies to get out of bed. Brave church friends remained with her to keep her safe until the nurse arrived and doubled the Diladid dose. She slept comfortably at last, surrounded by friends, and died this morning at around 8:00. I came and anointed her and sang “Amazing Grace” to her; something I had hoped to do while she was still alive. More church friends arrived to keep her company until the nurse made a final visit and pronouncement, and then the undertakers arrived to take her away. We formed a little receiving line in the hallway to touch her covered frame one last time and say our goodbyes.

When she was gone we gathered in the kitchen as women will do, telling stories about the past months and piecing it all together, laughing about funny things she had said or done, figuring out further logistics, phoning people. We went into the backyard and Peg and I both smoked one of her cigarettes in tribute. It was an impromptu wake, girl style.

A couple of weeks ago when I had been sitting with her and she said, “I wish I could make it easier on you,” I said, “YOU wish you could make this easier on ME? I think that works the other way around, kiddo.”

This can’t be her eulogy, of course. It’s just part of the story of the end of her life, told from my point-of-view — a story of how we find our way through the work of ministry one step at a time, one decision at a time, one phone call, one plan, one meal, one fiery confrontation, one cigarette, one prayer, one organizational chart of medication, one cup of coffee, one life and one death at a time.

She liked this blog. She liked that it allows me to initiate conversation about ministry, the church and liberal religion — all beloved to her — with a much wider community than our one congregation. I told her one time that I was committed to not writing about specific people in the church unless it was to make a shining example of them. “I don’t care if you write about me,” she said, “Just make it good.”

I hope I did, Jackie.

In memoriam
Jacqueline Lee Magazu
August 3, 1940 - June 13, 2008