The woman I spend time with is slowing down. We have a routine which includes a toasted bagel, and Earl Gray. We comment on the birds outside her window, and enjoy the squirrels. She can identify cardinals and blue jays but the others are just "little guys". I don't think they mind, since they do not know her name either.
This week she
seemed more tired than usual. This was not because of the fact that we caregivers push her to climb up and down a flight of stairs each morning, a task she does not appreciate, but which keeps her well worn heart pumping. Today even conversation seemed to exhaust her. So I sang.
"Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling,
from glen to glen and down the mountain side.
The summer's gone, and all the roses
falling,
it's you, it's you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back, when summer's in the meadow,
or when the valley's soft and white with snow.
It's I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow,
oh Danny boy, Oh Danny boy I love you so.
But come ye back when all the flowers are dying,
if I am dead, as dead I well may
be.
You'll come and find the place where I am lying,
and kneel and say an Ave there for me.
And I shall hear though soft you tread above me,
and all my grave will warmer, sweeter be.
For you will bend and tell me that you love me,
And I will sleep in peace until you come to me."
Which is the only Irish song I know. Her eyes were
closed and she smiled, just barely.
"That was my father's favorite song," she told me when I finished. I felt a surge of affection for her as the fifteen year old daughter who stepped into the role of bread winner, Irish soda bread mind you, when her father died suddenly. He drank too much, and yet my friend prefers to remember how he danced with her mother on Sunday nights during the Irish Hour on the radio. She is sure he is in
heaven.
She met her own husband dancing at the church hall, which was her main social life after working all day.
I brought out the Scrabble board. I try to set her up for good plays, but this time I didn't need to. She nailed a 59 point word on her third turn and a 45 point one after that. In fact she was doing so well I decided to call her on it when she tried to spell trivia with only one i. She topped 300 that
day.
It is hard to predict how much longer she will be with us. But when she does wake up in a summer glen, her husband will be there to take her hand.
