Nursing school taught me that I did not want to specialize in pediatrics nor gerontology. I didn’t want to work with babies because they couldn’t articulate what was wrong, and I didn’t want to work with older people because I didn’t want to witness their deaths. The saying goes, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans”, and God is laughing because kids and older people are all in my life!
A former church member Blessed me with a job with their home health agency right out of college. That afforded me the opportunity to care for a man in the memory care unit who always wanted to pay me for his food. The only way I got out of it was by reminding him that bus drivers ate free (he retired from Greyhound). I then cared for a Jewish lady, who didn’t quite like me because I turned into “Toddler Micha” and refused to do anything for her until she spoke to me with respect. I was pregnant and she had no problem telling me how big I was getting as I satisfied my Bojangles pinto bean and biscuit cravings. 🙄
I pretended to be rich for a few months after Michai was born by not working, but having to deal with Social Services for Medicaid and Food Stamps, as well as the WIC office, got on my nerves so I worked for another Home Health Agency because I needed money, a lot of it.
After working in a few homes, I made the decision that the racist old lady, whose house smelled racist, was going to be my final ride. I was going to take the boards and reluctantly work 12+ hours as a nurse and miss Michai growing up. 😭
I got a call from the agency’s administrator who gave me the history of a family and asked if I wanted the job. She had not ever done that before, and I think it was because the house was located off 25th Street and she thought I may have been afraid. 🤭
Met the family and felt like I was at my grandparent’s house. The wife ran things 💁🏾♀️, but consulted with her children and their wives to help keep things in order.
I wasn’t feeling well the day I was to begin, but couldn’t call in because the wife didn’t play. The lady I was to relieve started yelling at me about not putting supplies where she could find them. The wife pulled us in the livingroom and told us we would not upset her husband and we would remain professional at all times. She told us she would be making a decision about who would continue to care for her husband and who would return to the agency. 😳
The wife later called me and advised me to return to their house for a talk 😳😳😳. I was back in the livingroom. She told me she knew I hadn’t done anything, but had to say what she said because that lady knew where they lived and she didn’t know if she would “come back and act crazy.” It was at that moment I knew I had inherited another grandmother. What I didn’t know is that she would also become my bestfriend!
One of the first things she told me was to always discuss business with her in private because, “Every closed eye isn’t sleep.” I quickly learned what she meant when I asked her how they survived being married so long? The patient, whose eyes were closed and head was bowed, loudly recited, “”Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly.” I said, “I thought you were asleep.” The wife grunted and looked over her glasses at me as if to say, “I told you.” The patient gave me all the details of them meeting, courting and remaining married for nearly 60 years.
I learned of the wife’s teaching career, the patient’s career at the ABC store, their leadership roles in their church, and how they were as parents and grandparents. They didn’t argue. She was determined to care for him at home and he never wanted to be a burden to her. What is most memorable is their activity during elections. They were poll workers. To hear them talk about the number of Black people who couldn’t read but were still determined to vote always fuels me during election season. The wife, the educator, told me, “We couldn’t read the ballots to them, so they would point to a name. If it wasn’t who they should punch, I would either remain silent or grunt. If they should vote for them, I would clear my throat or quietly say, “uh huh.””
When they met Michai, the patient proclaimed he had the build to make a “fine baseball player”, telling us of his baseball days at North Carolina Central. The wife struggled to pick Michai up. When the holidays came around, he was always included on their Christmas List. When I told her his pediatrician referred him to a speech therapist, while continuing to look at TV, she said, “I knew that was going to happen. You don’t make him ask for things, you just give them to him. You have to make him use his words.” The patient, with closed eyes and bowed head said, “That’s the only way he’ll learn to communicate.” While I appreciated their advice, I didn’t know how we were going to survive elementary school, because Michai communicated too much!
We swapped life stories, some of which I shared with my grandparents as they went to Atkins with the wife’s siblings. One of the most common ways Black people show love to people they’ve never met is to feed them, and that’s exactly what my grandmother did. Portions of Sabbath dinners were saved for the wife, who I learned snuck some items to the patient who was on a feeding tube.
I was heartbroken when the wife passed. I will forever remember taking the husband to view her body so he could make a decision of whether the public would view her because she was really swollen. Through tears he said, “I want everybody to see the beauty I’ve witnessed all these years.”
I knew the probability of me caring for people like them in a Home Health environment would be close to impossible, so when the patient passed, I focused on my full-time job, as well as, Michai and his school activities.
I met a few people while caring for the couple. A pastor was brought to the house to receive the patient’s approval. Neighbors also visited…