Friday, March 5, 2010
March 28, 1927 to March 3, 2010
Jane R. Leonaitis passed in the early morning hours of the day we say, "Today is March third, tomorrow we march forth!"
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Epiphany ... the mirrors of others ... Precious!
I've had an Epiphany. Something about the way my cousin launched into what sort of a person his Auntie Jane is ... It soaked into me like beach water into squeaking tennies. What is it about who we are? Something about being mirrored in another person's eyes rounds out who we are. And what did Dougie say? That Auntie Jane is the sort of lady you like to sit next to one the bus.
It's been a few days now, and the picture keeps bouncing back to me. Ah, the lady on the bus, the one who chats you up a little and just brightens your day. You don't know what her medicine was made of, but something happened. She sprinkled some sparkles into your heart with her few words. It made both of you better, for sharing the moments.
Ships in the night . . . blinking a salutation to one another.*
It's good to know someone else is out there.
A soul touched a soul.
I want to be that lady on the bus.
Like I have told the kids for years, "Everybody's somebody else's weird guy."
-----------------------------
It's been a few days now, and the picture keeps bouncing back to me. Ah, the lady on the bus, the one who chats you up a little and just brightens your day. You don't know what her medicine was made of, but something happened. She sprinkled some sparkles into your heart with her few words. It made both of you better, for sharing the moments.
Ships in the night . . . blinking a salutation to one another.*
It's good to know someone else is out there.
A soul touched a soul.
I want to be that lady on the bus.
Like I have told the kids for years, "Everybody's somebody else's weird guy."
- ... be sure to take your turn
- ... see that guy over there, you think he's weird, don't you? Well, that's how it works. You're probably his weird guy, too.
- ... go ahead and take your turn, but if you take too many turns, you're weird
-----------------------------
*
As I told my son this evening over the phone, "Manda mis saludos a todo sus amigos alli." I can't see those guys, I don't know who they are. I don't know where he is . . . but I hear them in the background while I try to listen to Harrison's Spanish sentences. He's telling me that tomorrow in the morning he'll be back home, or tonight, maybe. He hasn't decided yet. But he also says that he has to go to work tomorrow at One. He'll be working from One until Six. And I understood all that. I loved the "manana por la manana" (or however it's said). And there he was, repeating the word manana over and over in the sentences.
Were they listening and enjoying themselves? Did they think that his mom could understand him? Did they know that I was trying to answer without using English... just slipping in and out of it a little now and then.
I love that so much; understanding the other language with just the "sense" of the words, rather than the translation all the time. Manana por la manana makes sense to me. I get what that means without translating it. I heard the word for the future tense of "work" . . . don't know that I could repeat it, but I got the concept. I understood "one til six", saw the digits in my mind's eye. And it was all Spanish. Boy! That's fun.
A man once said that learning another language is like finding another soul inside yourself. I get that.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
We've had a very busy week
Christmas Eve Day 2009
Melissa and I drove out to Lynnwood to get "Gramma Jane" and took public transportation from Northgate to the airport to meet Harrison, arriving from Buenos Aires. The air was chilly, and it was a quarter-mile walk from the end of the train line to inside the airport, but it felt safe (no traffic to contend with) and was totally flat (no out-of-breath-gramma. Hooray!)
Harrison had traveled 19 hours (via DC) and he looked wonderful in his Christmas tie-die t-shirt (lovely forest green with dark red.) We were thrilled to see him and always amazed at his ability to slip from Spanish back to English. He had checked two huge suitcases and his skateboard. He also had his laptop, backpack and jacket. The four of us took the new light rail and tunnel bus back to the car, an easy ride, except for the crowd from downtown to Northgate. (On Christmas Eve, downtown workers head home early, so the bus from the bus tunnel was quite crowded.)
What a cheap way to get someone from the airport! And the day was beautiful.
Christmas Day 2009
Mother & Wayne joined our family for Christmas morning. It was supposed to be Christmas-lite -- de-emphasizing purchases, and focusing on treasuring one another. Lelia and Tony came from Bellingham, Melissa was home from Portland, Harrison was in from Buenos Aires (until the end of February), my sister, Micah, came in the morning, and Sara Keizer (our like-a-niece student friend, daughter of the best man at our wedding) took over the main breakfast tasks (her gift to the family). With all the chocolate in the Christmas stockings, it was great to have a nice egg-filled breakfast casserole to top off the morning.
Toward the end of the gift-opening, the "non-presents" from Melissa were opened. What brilliant ideas she put together, two deliveries of organic produce for Rich and me, "a bike for a kid" for Elizabeth (this is a program in Portland where you can provide the funds and an organization coordinates getting bikes, helmets, etc. to kids from the area). What a perfect gift for bike-riding, kid-loving, tender- hearted Elizabeth. Gramma's handiwork came next, with booklets of the family history. Mother had done such a wonderful job, writing up a page per person, talking about the various people back through our family's generations. We were overwhelmed, and everyone started flipping through the pages and reading to themselves. It had gotten quiet, but it was a rich warm sort of quiet. Lelia was brought to tears, when she read about my brother, John, and my dad, who had both died. She was overwhelmed at the thought of losing a daddy and a brother. It was so tender. It looked like everyone made the individual response to Gramma Jane, amazed at all the work she had done, at the brilliance and the awesome stories. We were very grateful.
Gramma was a little wacky, missing words now and then, and just a little "different"; but one of our family mottos is "Everybody's somebody else's weird guy", so we just loved her, thinking that it was just the stress of her recent evacuation from her apartment and living without her normal surroundings at the holiday season (due to water pouring into the living room from the unit above, she and Wayne had been relocated two weeks earlier with just a few of their belongings, and the expected "day or two" would end up extending past the first of the year, just as Wayne predicted.)
Wayne and Mother left in the early afternoon to go to Steve Banta's for another Christmas celebration. We were all glad to have the families so close. (Melissa also left early in the afternoon, so that she could spend time with Brendon's family, Harrison went to work at the last-run movie theater up the street, and the rest of us went to a movie . . . except for Micah, who had Minutes to type up.) I received a call from Steve Banta later in the evening. Mother had been "different" during the Banta Christmas get-together. They were concerned and wanted to let me know. I told him I'd take her to the Group Health walk-in clinic the next day and get her checked out.
Little did I know what December 26th would hold.
The Day after Christmas
Late in the morning, I phoned Wayne and told him I'd like to take Mother to the clinic. That sounded fine to him. So, I drove the fifteen minutes to their temporary apartment and told Mother I'd like to take her to the weekend clinic to see what's going on with her. She was fine with that, got ready, and we were off to Bellevue (Group Health, beside Overlake Hospital). It was the middle of the day.
Melissa and I drove out to Lynnwood to get "Gramma Jane" and took public transportation from Northgate to the airport to meet Harrison, arriving from Buenos Aires. The air was chilly, and it was a quarter-mile walk from the end of the train line to inside the airport, but it felt safe (no traffic to contend with) and was totally flat (no out-of-breath-gramma. Hooray!)
Harrison had traveled 19 hours (via DC) and he looked wonderful in his Christmas tie-die t-shirt (lovely forest green with dark red.) We were thrilled to see him and always amazed at his ability to slip from Spanish back to English. He had checked two huge suitcases and his skateboard. He also had his laptop, backpack and jacket. The four of us took the new light rail and tunnel bus back to the car, an easy ride, except for the crowd from downtown to Northgate. (On Christmas Eve, downtown workers head home early, so the bus from the bus tunnel was quite crowded.)
What a cheap way to get someone from the airport! And the day was beautiful.
Christmas Day 2009
Mother & Wayne joined our family for Christmas morning. It was supposed to be Christmas-lite -- de-emphasizing purchases, and focusing on treasuring one another. Lelia and Tony came from Bellingham, Melissa was home from Portland, Harrison was in from Buenos Aires (until the end of February), my sister, Micah, came in the morning, and Sara Keizer (our like-a-niece student friend, daughter of the best man at our wedding) took over the main breakfast tasks (her gift to the family). With all the chocolate in the Christmas stockings, it was great to have a nice egg-filled breakfast casserole to top off the morning.
Toward the end of the gift-opening, the "non-presents" from Melissa were opened. What brilliant ideas she put together, two deliveries of organic produce for Rich and me, "a bike for a kid" for Elizabeth (this is a program in Portland where you can provide the funds and an organization coordinates getting bikes, helmets, etc. to kids from the area). What a perfect gift for bike-riding, kid-loving, tender- hearted Elizabeth. Gramma's handiwork came next, with booklets of the family history. Mother had done such a wonderful job, writing up a page per person, talking about the various people back through our family's generations. We were overwhelmed, and everyone started flipping through the pages and reading to themselves. It had gotten quiet, but it was a rich warm sort of quiet. Lelia was brought to tears, when she read about my brother, John, and my dad, who had both died. She was overwhelmed at the thought of losing a daddy and a brother. It was so tender. It looked like everyone made the individual response to Gramma Jane, amazed at all the work she had done, at the brilliance and the awesome stories. We were very grateful.
Gramma was a little wacky, missing words now and then, and just a little "different"; but one of our family mottos is "Everybody's somebody else's weird guy", so we just loved her, thinking that it was just the stress of her recent evacuation from her apartment and living without her normal surroundings at the holiday season (due to water pouring into the living room from the unit above, she and Wayne had been relocated two weeks earlier with just a few of their belongings, and the expected "day or two" would end up extending past the first of the year, just as Wayne predicted.)
Wayne and Mother left in the early afternoon to go to Steve Banta's for another Christmas celebration. We were all glad to have the families so close. (Melissa also left early in the afternoon, so that she could spend time with Brendon's family, Harrison went to work at the last-run movie theater up the street, and the rest of us went to a movie . . . except for Micah, who had Minutes to type up.) I received a call from Steve Banta later in the evening. Mother had been "different" during the Banta Christmas get-together. They were concerned and wanted to let me know. I told him I'd take her to the Group Health walk-in clinic the next day and get her checked out.
Little did I know what December 26th would hold.
The Day after Christmas
Late in the morning, I phoned Wayne and told him I'd like to take Mother to the clinic. That sounded fine to him. So, I drove the fifteen minutes to their temporary apartment and told Mother I'd like to take her to the weekend clinic to see what's going on with her. She was fine with that, got ready, and we were off to Bellevue (Group Health, beside Overlake Hospital). It was the middle of the day.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
What we're noticing . . . late December 2009
- Word-finding difficulties & substitutions
Jane's expressive aphasia varies in degree. Sometimes it's not noticeable at all. Yesterday at the neurosurgeon's office, she didn't seem to miss a single word. But at other times, she has used the word "ticket" to mean a little paper item, "mirror" for the moon and other bright objects, "button" for something round, and "paid" or "pay" for a wide assortment of verbs. - Holding onto a thought
She sometimes seems to stick to one subject at a time, not moving on to another subject as quickly as others around her. Very tenacious. - Alert and oriented
Jane does well in answering the "orientation" questions the medical folks pose: Who's the president, what's the date, where are you, who's this person over here, why are you here... etc. - Equal grips and muscle tone
She can squeeze your hands equally, press with her feet, stick out her tongue straight, and follow the other neuro checks without missing a beat. - Sleeping
Jane's nighttime sleeplessness is not as severe as it had been for the previous several months. - Eating
Her appetite is decreased. Not particularly hungry much of the time.
In no particular order (taken from a list at brainhospice.com)
Cognitive/Personality/Speech
Basically cheery and alert with a "taking care of business" attitude
Word-finding difficulties
Appetite sporadic
Talks about tying up loose
Brings up unfinished business
May begin sentences but not be able to finish them
May say things that don't make sense, jumbled sentences
May hum to herself little melodic hums
Slight confusion
Harder to sustain a conversation
May say some odd things that make you think "Where did that come from?"
Asks about the next treatments or appointments
Likely to nap (this is a long-time daytime behavior)
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