Stories Behind Wrinkled Faces: part one
This essay follows Monday's article with stories about my In-Home Support clients in the early 1980s.
It was a tumultuous time for me, settling into a new community and a new religion. Among the many things I learned from my elderly clients, they gave me a sense of stability and love.
Betty Dobrin
Betty Dobrin, 85, a diminutive woman with a tremendous zest for life, immediately nailed me for speaking to her as if she were a child. Lesson # One! Indeed, I didn't notice my condescending voice at all. Rather than sending us off to a negative relationship, though, we continued to be friends, corresponding for several years.
When I started working for her, I was breaking up with my boyfriend. One day, I broke into tears and excused my emotional state with, "It must be that sentimental time of the month." She hadn't menstruated for decades, so that comment confused her. After pouring out my sorrows, she revealed how her first husband took her to tour a mine he owned in Peru. The foreman complained that women are bad luck, so the husband told her to leave. She did more than that.
She divorced him and returned to California. From then on, she lived quite free of men, owning her own beauty salon in Hollywood. One evening, she spotted a very handsome couple walking down Sunset Boulevard. It turned out to be Charlie Chaplin and Oona O'Neil. It was then I realized she had lived in the epicenter of history. Her little salon catered to the star-studded community that blended artistic endeavor with the early development of cinematic technology. I was suddenly star-struck, but she was so casual about it.
Entering old age, she didn't slow down. She and her sister, Hilda, traveled around Europe in a VW van when they were in their seventies. Every night, they'd put a huge pair of men's boots outside the door to ward off unpleasant visitors during the night. I imagined them rubbing shoulders with gallant old-world gentlemen as well as American teenagers tramping between India and Carnaby Street.
Betty cared for Hilda in that condo until she died of cancer. A Rosicrucian, Betty told me she held vigil for a full 24 hours before calling the mortuary because she wanted Hilda's spirit to have time to separate properly. That night, a bright ball of light bounced around the room, hovered for a few moments in front of her face, then disappeared. She believed it was Hilda saying "goodbye."
I'll always remember her explaining how the energy force within our solar plexus travels up our spine and pops out at the top of the head. Perhaps that's the tunnel and the light at the end that people talk about after near-death experiences.
Weeks later, Betty moved to an apartment in Carmel. For the next few years, she worked in the art gallery across the street, communed with her gay neighbors, and her grandniece in Pacific Grove. We corresponded until I received the inevitable returned letter marked "addressee unknown."
Ella McNerney
Most of my clients lived in Capitola Gardens, in comfortable little apartments with patios and beautiful grounds, definitely the kind of place I wouldn't mind living in at that age. Though 88 and stooped and frail, she hinted at naughty things she did during the Roaring 20s in Chicago. Granted, she wasn't a gun-totin' moll for Al Capone, but she remembered those days of mayhem when cars sped down the streets, gats blazing. She spent much of her adult life in Anchorage, AK, employed as a telephone operator before moving to California.
As I cleaned around her, she penciled in answers to the STAR magazine crossword puzzle which took her all week to finish. The television game shows chattered and clanged in the background, providing human voices, despite the fact her neighbors were close at hand.
Her niece and grandnieces visited often and, she confessed, kept her going. They even got her on a plane to attend a wedding back east. That trip charged her energies so much she decided to buy a new couch … or chesterfield, as she called it. Like some people won't buy green bananas, she thought the old one would last the rest of her life, which she hoped would end soon. Often, she asked me why she woke up every morning. It was a common theme with some of my clients.
She had a keen sense of humor, though. Whenever I asked her what she'd been up to, she'd say, "Oh, just fartin' around." So, when she asked me why she had to live so long, what was her purpose, I told her, "Well, you just have to fart around some more."
photo of Olive Geister, writing to one of her many friends. (photo by Sue Cauhape
Olive Geister
Ella connected me with Olive, a woman across from her apartment who needed housework done. Olive was another plucky old lady who drove around town helping others and doing errands. Oftentimes, I would arrive to find a note listing things for me to do. Even when she was ill, she'd be sitting in bed, writing letters.
She was born in Plymouth, England and had spent time in India -- or her parents had -- as missionaries for the Seventh Day Adventists. She owned several pieces of Indian brassware that I polished on occasion. It was one of many household chores I learned to do from clients.
One day as I was cleaning the kitchen, I heard her say to Ella, "I think we've got a gem here. Let's try hard to keep her around." I needed to hear things like that. Such praise didn't come often from other quarters. That's one reason why I liked my "little old ladies." They gave me the love I needed and couldn't get elsewhere. Anyway, there was a woman, a Seventh Day Adventist, in the Gardens who confided that because Olive had left the church, she wasn't going to Heaven. If anyone was going to Heaven, it would be Olive.
She was so positive, even when she was in pain. She would dash out in the middle of the night to help a friend in need. It was on such an occasion she landed in the hospital. A bout of diverticulitis became so intense she drove herself to the hospital, where her daughter, Shirley, and her granddaughter worked as nurses.
When I visited her, there she perched regally in her hospital bed, benevolently overseeing things and greeting me with a cheerful hello. She was the Queen of Heaven as far as I was concerned. Then she had a stroke during that time and died. Her dignity and personal strength will always inspire me.
Lorna Starr
An aristocratic woman, Lorna always sat in a straight-backed chair while I dusted her books and knickknacks. She owned a ship's clock that belonged to her sea captain father that ticked and bonged the hour, jarring the silence in her apartment.
When I bought her groceries, the list included batteries for her radio that played through the night. Scarcely did she have me take her anywhere, except one rainy day, she climbed into my disreputable VW van for a trip to the doctor. After taking her back home, I drove off to my next client. A sudden stop brought a deluge of rainwater, that had collected in the sunroof, down into the passenger seat where Lorna had been sitting just moments earlier. Of all the clients ….
Edith Burger
When I started working for Edith, she was about to have cancer surgery. I drove her to the hospital the long way just to give her a ride on a beautiful sunny day. She spent her days in a dark 35-foot trailer just blocks from the ocean, but I doubt if she ever saw it. In fact, I don't think she even walked around the park where her trailer stood. The drive wasn't long enough to make her late, just out of the ordinary, but at one point she asked, "where in the hell are you taking me?" She seemed miffed when she walked into the hospital entrance, but I wanted to leave her with a sunny day in case the surgery took a bad turn. Sometimes you just have to do what your told and not wander off the plan.
Unlike Ella and Olive, Edith wasn't very positive. Like Eeyore, long sighs, mild complaints, then a funny little gleam in her eye as though it all was a joke. Okie sense of humor, I guess. Not unlike many of her generation who dwelled on the hardships of The Depression as if to show the absurdity of it all.
There wasn't much to do in her place, just vacuum and clean the bathroom, do a little laundry. Sometimes we went to the store. She struggled to walk supported by the cart. I could've gone for her, but the exercise helped her heal from the surgery. Mostly we just talked about this and that. I think, at least I hope, she appreciated the company. It was hard to tell with Edith.
Leroy Epperson
A 96-year-old gentleman, Leroy lived in a tiny house in the parking lot behind his son's furniture store. He'd have the coffee and cookies ready when I arrived and we'd talk for about 45 minutes about how he'd watch the delivery guys load the trucks, how Ruby, his DIL, took him on errands, and why in the world he was living so long. You can see the pattern here with people in this stage of life.
After we'd "solved all the world's problems," he'd move to a barcalounger by the picture window while I cleaned his house and did laundry. He joked that his doctor told him if he didn't start eating more than Cambell's soup, cookies, and coffee, he'd die. We both had a good chuckle about that. It's kind of like that running joke in The Shootist where people told J.B. Books laudanum was addictive. Who cares?
Weekly conversations with me and the occasional neighbor who paused to wave hello was about all he had going. Leaning back in that chair, raising his skinny arms over his head to stretch, he'd ask almost every time, "Why am I still alive?" So he kept the coffee pot on in case one of the workers came over to take a break. His door was always open for visitors.
The only outdoor space Leroy could call his own was a dusty patch of dirt beside his doorstep. It managed to entertain us both once when he saw something digging at the edge of the pavement. We walked out to investigate and found a very defensive gopher pushing dirt up from his new home. When the beast felt our presence, it turned around and bared its teeth. Leroy could only laugh at such ferocity.
Soon afterward, a delivery guy and his girlfriend brought a bunch of bulbs and little wire fences to plant a garden in that dirt. The gopher didn't even find it worth staying very long. Too much hubbub and too few edibles. Or maybe it hit a rock and scampered across the parking lot to find other digs.
The couple set to work that weekend. By my next visit, he showed me what they'd accomplished. He raved about their work and generosity. He couldn't quite believe someone would do that just out of the blue. Then he understood why he was alive: to give those kids a reason to do something nice for someone. About a month later, he died, never to see the flowers around his little house. And within a year, the house was gone, too.
Oletta Wheeler and Goldie Berry
Goldie and Oletta were mother and daughter who lived in a converted mink barn. Although it had been insulated and plumbed, it still had cement floors. The few furnishings included a beautiful carved banquet table that had become the home of dusty spider webs. For some ridiculous reason, I couldn't bring myself to sweep them away. And nobody seemed to care. I was just there to sweep the floors, clean the bathroom and sink counter.
Goldie was fairly out of it with dementia, wandering around pointing and laughing at mysterious things. Oletta would stand in an out-of-the-way corner rolling her eyes at me. She had to live "in a separate domicile" to receive her SSI, but spent most of her time watching over her mother. Both had worked as migrant farm workers, but for some reason, Goldie got Social Security. Oletta didn't and had to placate the welfare people to get a pittance to live on.
From what I could see, she wasn't cheating anybody really. I also cleaned her trailer in Soquel, although there was hardly anything to do other than be a sounding board for her. She was old, unable to work, with no other means of support. The Welfare Dept. would even dock her if she  had a glass of beer at the bar down the street. Somebody might squeal on her and she'd lose her SSI. It certainly wasn't a hardship for me to keep my mouth shut on the matter.
Sue, these word-snapshots of lives lived are such a compelling read! Bravo!