a pearl like no other

Yesterday I found out that one of my favorite volunteers at the Health Learning Center passed away last week. Pearl was a tiny little lady with short white and silver hair cropped almost in a pixie cut. She was a former public school teacher who raised her two daughters on her own after her husband suddenly passed away. I loved working with her when I was at the HLC. She was a smart and sassy lady and nothing escaped her eye. She was often appalled at the way my boss treated everyone so condescendingly and often said that I should replace her - making me chuckle.

I envisioned busting into my bosses office and announcing, "YOU'RE FIRED!", and Pearl would be backing me up with her hands on her hips nodding her head.

Well, that never happened. Pearl and I spent a lot of time at the front desk talking about patrons, my boss, the institution, our lives and our love for the German Dutch Baby Pancake. She would sit perched on one of the swivel stools with a giant plastic travel mug filled with ice chips that she would suck on to subdue the ever constant frog in her throat. She told me about how she married later in life to a career man (I think insurance). She wanted children so terribly and had her first child at the age of 38 and the second at 40. This surprised me, I never really thought that women had children that late in life then. She wanted to have more but the doctor told her she shouldn't even think of it.

She had two wonderful daughters that she and her husband just adored. The were the love of her husband's life. Her husband suddenly died from a heart attack and she was left to raise her two daughters on her own. She had to become re-certified as a teacher and then worked for years as a public school teacher. Her daughters grew up and both married. One lives in Evanston in a large house with no children and the other in New York who has a daughter named Eleanor who has to be most loved granddaughter of all time. Pearl just adored Eleanor. She sang her praises to the highest reaches of our atmosphere. Eleanor sounded like the most delightful, smart, sassy and observant just like her grandmother. Pearl and Eleanor adored each other.

There are hazards of working in the Health Learning Center, they include becoming a hypochondriac, burning out on trying to help (or save) everyone and being smart enough to know bad news when you read it. Pearl came in late to her shift one afternoon and towards closing time she handed me a couple of sheets of paper with her blood test results on it. She asked me to look up the tests to tell her what they meant because the doctor didn't explain and simply told her she had return for a scan of her liver. I went online to my favorite site for lab tests (labtestsonline.org) and looked up the blood tests. One was a general profile the other was specifically to test for a protein that indicates liver cancer. I read the definition of the test over and over trying to see if there was a way that I could say that maybe the protein was just and indicator that something was up. Like one of those initial tests that may show and elevated something that is indicative of something else and more testing is needed. Well, no luck. This test was testing for liver cancer and that was it. I printed out the information and she asked me what it said even though she would read it later. I tried to spin the protein thing as not definitely liver cancer. I said maybe the protein was just elevated and they weren't sure yet. She was upset but seemed okay that I told her. I didn't hear much about it after that.

She was out for a few weeks with bronchitis and came back. She wasn't eating much and kept on losing weight and she was lamenting how she just wasn't hungry.
At this point in time (June 2007) I was leaving the Health Learning Center for a new job elsewhere in the hospital. I had some flexibility in my schedule so I suggested we meet up to go the Original Pancake House for Dutch Baby pancakes. We met on the corner of Bellevue and Rush and had a fantastic breakfast inside. She ate nearly the entire pancake and proclaimed that it was the most she had eaten in weeks. We talked about our families, my new job and the eventuality of me marrying Jeremy. Afterwards, we parted with me to work and her on a bus back home.

Fast forward many months later to Spring when my friend and former coworker in the HLC tells me that Pearl had palliative radiation on her liver. She had an operation where they implanted tiny seeds of radiation to focus on the cancer in her liver so it wouldn't affect the rest of her body. My friend said that Pearl seemed much better, more energetic and feeling good. I stopped over to say hi and visit. I brought photos from the cruise that Jeremy and I went on that past February. She was thrilled. I also told her that we were getting married and she exclaimed, "Mazel tov!" This had to be one of the most genuine responses I received about the news. It just made my heart just swell with love. I promised I would stop by again with photos after we married. I gave her a hug, stooping down to encircle her tiny frame with my arms and left.

I never stopped by with photos. Another missed opportunity to be a good person and keep my promises to the people I care about. I have done it before and I have done it again. I really need to take more active role in the lives of the people I care about. Although they may be surrounded by those who love them, isolating them from me (though I may not be that important) is one less person to have near and the act of isolating myself from them means another friendship lost.

Verrückt Kopf

There are so many different sorts of crazy. I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Ever since my co-worker who has the occasional irregular heartbeat (not ever once diagnosed) started carrying her own portable defibrillator with her. The same kind of red, portable defibrillator that you see behind glass in different office buildings, hospitals or gyms.

I know her neuroses shouldn't affect me but when she asked me to run downstairs and get the portable defibrillator from the entryway if she ever passed out and she didn't have hers is when it all crossed the boundary. I told her no. I told her I would call 911. Then she got her own defibrillator. There is a sign on her portable defibrillator case that says, "Call 911!". I asked her the other day how many people have called 911 on her behalf. She said that she turns the case towards her so people won't see it. Oh. The thing is, her craziness is being fed by her husband who bought her the defibrillator because she's commuting long distance from work. Another flaw with this notion is that sometimes she drives to work. Is she going to pull over and flag down a cow to shock her back to life?

So that's one kind of crazy.

Then there are the people who don't quite agree with the so-called upright notions of the world. We often find humor in terrible scenarios - real or imagined... but almost always with a hard grain of truth. We laugh at the idea of "shocking" the corporate folks we work with by posting terrible truths online. Of course we would never do it - we need our jobs after all. But I find it hilarious that the mere notion of it just horrifies the over-starched people I work with. No twinkle of the recognition of humor in their eye - just the stony cold glare of, "How can you be so immature?"

So there's another kind of crazy.

Then there is the crazy that you grow up with and never realize that it's crazy until you start seeing it through other people's eyes. You always knew some thing was off. You didn't agree with the swearing and you didn't think that you should be terrified everytime one of the parents got mad. You tried to protect your younger sibling from "the crazy" by acting like a second mother so they wouldn't have to endure the repercussions of just being a regular hyper kid. So you grow up, get into your first adult relationship and then single handedly recreate the crazy that you had at home growing up. Somehow the crazy doesn't work. You're just as miserable as were living at home and now you have a failed relationship to add to it. How can this be? Your parents have endured "the crazy" for 30 years... so it must work, right? You're not at fault completely - a product of environment and inexperience.

You finally realize that this crazy isn't right. You end things and try to move on but find you have massive anxiety and obsessive thoughts. You go to therapy to get back on track. You start to notice that a certain parental unit isn't as sane as they try to be and realize that while growing up - everyone was going through the motions. Everything was staged, not quite genuine, not quite real but hey, "SMILE!... SMILE NATURALLY!... DON'T LOOK SO FAKE!" All to be a so-called normal family - or the normal family that was envisioned in the certain parental unit's head.

So I think the worst kind of crazy is the kind when you don't realize you're crazy but you're grasping at threads of what you think is sanity while everyone around can see that the threads don't cover up the insanity - but emphasizes what is missing.

Everyone has a little crazy but I think it's good to know that you have it. If you have someone you respect to call you out on it when it goes overboard - ever the better. Lucky you and lucky everyone else who should know you.