Aging with Class

So a couple of Sundays ago, I ran into a friend in the parking lot on the way into church.  I've known her for several years, mostly as my daughter's theatre teacher during middle school summers and as the tireless director of community and church productions.  We met when she wanted my daughter, then ten, to play the role of  Gladys in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and roped me into playing the mother.  She retired last summer, and I would have guessed that she was in her mid-70s.

Anyway, we encountered each other on the way into church, and she asked how my daughter was doing, and then stumbled and grasped my arm with both hands.  "Just a little dizzy," she gasped in surprise.  I still thought that we were going to church, except that some faint warning bell was sounding in my head, telling me that shakiness in an older person should not be ascribed to the klutziness I would have put it down to in myself.

Once inside, a chair located and a nurse in the congregation consulted, I phoned the doctor on call, who said that a visit to the ER was necessary.  Luckily, the ER on Sunday morning is a relatively relaxed place, so we visited for the next three hours while I tried to locate my friend's son (cell phones are a great invention when they're turned on) and made some other calls for her.  In the process of rifling through her purse for insurance cards and phone numbers, I learned that she's 84 -- 84, and a couple of months ago she directed a fabulous production of You Can't Take It With You!  Mostly, though, I paid close attention to the charm and elegance with which she handled the usual hospital indignities.  Charm and elegance not being among my usual attributes, I could see that I had a lot to learn.

Eventually her son materialized and I went home.  The next day he told me that the assessment seemed to be that a readjustment of her myriad meds was needed, so I took off for North Carolina, assured that she would be relaxing in her own home long before I reached my destination.

As it turned out, she hasn't gotten home yet. More doctors and more consultations and, next thing I heard, she was scheduled  for open-heart surgery on Monday.  I went to see her Sunday night, when I was again astonished by her grace and good cheer.  She had encountered lots of staff members who had known her husband, a pediatrician, and had had many visits and phone calls. I told her that she was the only person I knew who could turn a week in the hospital into a resort vacation, and she assured me that the production for the next morning was well-planned and blocked out to her satisfaction.

It's a rough road.  I made a visit today, to one very tough lady just out of cardiac intensive care.  I don't think she had understood what a physical assault the surgery would be, and she's at the awful post-op stage where you can't imagine that you will ever recover.  I know that this kind of experience is life-changing, but I assured her that once she really started to heal, she would see dramatic changes.  She says that everyone tells her the same thing, and I can see that she's trying hard to hang onto that hope.

I'm so glad that I happened to get out of my car at the moment that I did two weeks ago.  I feel very protective of this friend, and I hope she'll be a new woman in a couple of months.