One interesting thing I learned about Diane is that she didn’t like animals as pets. When I first visited her cute little 2-bedroom house, I discovered that she liked an uncluttered appearance, decorating simply with carefully chosen items. There were no pieces of furniture with shelves full of souvenirs or collections of this and that. The second revelation was the BIRD. It was a Cockatoo who only knew to scream one word: “NO!” It must have been the only word it ever heard from Diane. It seemed incongruous that she had a bird for a pet, and she soon found it another owner. Since I was often away from home, I had not gotten another cat. I told Diane that I would not do so as long as she gave me all the affection I could receive from a cat. I jokingly said: “After you get Alzheimer’s and don’t recognize a cat, I may get one.” Little did I know how those words would come back to haunt me.
Diane told me about her father who was
in the Navy during WWII. That and her
interest in history had led her to read the complete series of Patrick O’Brian novels
set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. She had become fascinated by ships and was
excited when I signed us up for an Olivia cruise to the Western Caribbean in
March 1992.
Since the cruise was again leaving from Ft.
Lauderdale, we could go early and spend a couple of days in Miami with
Paulette. I wanted everyone I knew to
meet Diane and that included my old officemate from Kansas State,
Paulette. Diane and Paulette got along very
well, and Paulette told us all about her hobby volunteering with the Rare Fruit
Council which is dedicated to the education, introduction and promotion of rare
tropical fruits. Taking it to heart,
Paulette had planted some of these trees in her backyard, and they were already
producing small fruits. She also took us
to our first visit at Fairchild Gardens, named after the plant explorer David
Fairchild (1869–1954) who brought more than 75,000 plants from all over the
world to the United States.
Paulette took us to board the SS
Dolphin IV, the ship Olivia had chartered from its Greek owners. Judy Dlugacz, the President and Founder of
Olivia, enjoyed telling the story about meeting the Greek owner. She was initially concerned that he would not
want to charter a ship full of lesbians.
However, he reassured her that he was well acquainted with the Greek
poet Sappho from the Isle of Lesbos and had no concerns.
Diane loved being on a ship. She couldn’t wait to explore it from bow to
stern (front to back), port to starboard (left to right), top deck to lowest
passenger deck. After the first stop in
Nassau, we sailed to the island of Cozumel located 12 miles off the coast of
Mexico. Diane and I were up early as
usual, sitting in the lounge having coffee, watching as the ship approached the
dock. All of a sudden, the ship lurched
and our coffee splashed. Then the boat
was going backwards. During breakfast,
the boat approached shore again and docked.
When we left to snorkel and view the botanical gardens, we could see
what looked like a big bite that had been taken out of the prow of the
ship. On the first approach to shore, the
ship hit the cement dock which penetrated the first layer of metal, but fortunately,
the ship had a double hull and the second layer was intact. We passengers would have a longer than
planned stay in Cozumel.
Picture below shows the expected cruise
route from Ft. Lauderdale to Nassau, around Cuba and on to Cozumel.
When we returned to the ship, we found
that the drinks were on the house, that is the ship, for the rest of our
trip. We still had all of our Olivia entertainers,
so the afternoon singers in the lounges and the evening concerts of singers and
comedians continued unabated. We were
told the ship’s owners and their insurance company representatives were on the
way to decide what to do. Meanwhile, we
found it very embarrassing that the island residents and tourists were all
coming by our dock, on land and by boat, viewing the hole in our ship and
laughing at our misfortune.
The next day a small plane load of us flew
to the nearby Yucatan Peninsula on the Mexican mainland and landed at the very
small airport near Chichen Itza, the ancient Mayan city. During the tour of the city, I particularly
enjoyed viewing The Observatory that showed the inhabitants had some knowledge
of natural happenings. The carvings were
elaborate and sometimes gruesome. I
climbed the steps to the platform at the top of the Temple of the Warriors
where sacrifices were made, while Diane kept watch on me from below. We joined a small tour that was going inside
the biggest pyramid, El Castillo, but after going in a short distance, we both
got a “spooky” feeling and backed out.
We learned that games played in The Ball Court were often deadly with
the losing team’s leader killed and his skull used to make a new ball. I was very glad one of my teams never played
that ball game. The scariest part of our
trip to Chichen Itza was the small plane used for the flight there and back.
Carvings at Chichen Itza
Picture of the observatory showing
planetarium-like dome.
Picture
of the Temple of the Warriors showing the stairs I climbed to the top platform,
while Diane watched from the ground below.
Picture below is of El Castillo. I didn’t climb these stairs.
Picture
of the ball court shows the round goal mounted vertically. Try to imagine dunking the “ball” in this
one.
We were told that our cruise would have to
be cut short, as the decision was made to fly us all back to Miami. The ship and crew would proceed to the port
at Mobile, Alabama for repairs. The
morning came to leave, and it was so funny to see the procession of island
taxis with no more than four passengers each being driven from the ship to the
airport, then back to the ship, and so forth.
The comedians on the airplanes kept everything light hearted. Diane and I were once again able to assemble
an album that told the story of our cruise.
Joyce, one of Diane’s cousins, made a cover with a colorful drawing
showing two women stranded on an island with coconuts falling on their
heads. This would be the last album we
assembled.
I conducted my life by playing hard when I
was on vacation and working hard when I was not. I didn’t earn money when I was sick or on
vacation. I just built that cost into my
hourly rate so that I could maintain an acceptable income level. I imagined my brain being like a file
drawer. I had a drawer for each client,
vacation or plan for entertainment. I
could keep each folder open for the time needed, then close it and open
another. I was glad that I could do this
so easily.
Diane and I asked more friends to join us
for weekends at the lake. She really
enjoyed cooking and entertaining. If we
had overnight guests, she served breakfast the next morning consisting of fruit
followed by eggs and breakfast rolls from the On the Rise Bakery. Her cute fruit faces were always creative and
funny, changing with the availability of different varieties of fruit. For example, it might have a cantaloupe smile,
strawberry eyes with blueberry pupils, mandarin orange segments for ears and banana
ends for the nose. We started thinking
about adding a dock, which also meant a boat and waverunners. We were going to become sailors. Oh My!
I was busy as ever with work, getting more
business clients and learning the new software that the Searle IT staff was adding
for plate bioassays. I planned and taught
classes on the new software for the scientists who would be using it. I also witnessed how swiftly Searle could dismiss
staff. When they changed the disease
they were targeting for new pharmaceuticals, some personnel were asked to hand
over their ID badges and were immediately escorted out the door with their
personal belongings.
In September 1992, Diane and I made another
car trip back East. We visited Diane’s
sister, going with her and her children to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis
Island. We had dinner at the Meadowlands
race track with a family group that included some of Diane’s cousins and their
children and Earlene’s sons. We had
breakfast with both of our sister’s and their husbands. We then needed time alone, so we drove up to
Mystic Seaport, Connecticut and then on to Provincetown. We took a tour of the sand dunes and went
whale watching in Cape Cod Bay. After
leaving the Cape, we stopped for a night in Boston and had dinner with
Earlene’s youngest daughter, Joyce, at Legal Seafood. That’s where I learned I really disliked
monkfish, and that I never would drive a car in Boston again. There were too many one-way streets.
Concierge dining at the race track.
Provincetown Sand Dunes
October meant that I had a birthday, and
Diane really surprised me with her gift.
She and I had both read the books about the Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey, and Diane had seen the
sculptures I already had of dragons. She
presented me with a glass dragon mounted on a manzanita root, made by the
artist Vincent Houston. The dragon was
placed on a stair landing with mirrors on two sides, so that we could see many
images of the dragon. The only request I
made was that the eyes be changed to red, which Diane had Vincent do.
I looked forward to being Diane’s
guest. George Tiller, the late-term abortion
provider in Wichita, had a guest suite open to visitors. He and I shared similar backgrounds as we
both were born in Wichita, graduated from The fall Planned Parenthood
conference was in Chicago, Illinois, and East High and the University of Kansas,
although he was one year ahead of me.
Tiller went to medical school at KUMC where I had worked for several
years. He and I loudly sang the cheer
and alumni songs of our high school and college to the entertainment of his
guests.
Diane started taking some vacation time to
go with me on my weekly visits to St. Louis.
She encouraged me to stay in St. Louis both Sunday and Monday nights so
I wouldn’t have to drive in very early on Monday morning. She was a great chauffeur, dropping me off and
picking me up at work. She spent her
days doing any number of things, like going to the Botanical Gardens or the Art
Museum. Early on, she shopped for lake
house living room furniture. She
narrowed down the choices, and, after work on a Monday, we went back and
ordered a large sectional and two smaller sofas that were delivered to the lake.
On another trip, she shopped for an
impressive jacket to wear at her last big Planned Parenthood event which the
actresses, Sally Field, Kate Capshaw and Tricia Brock attended. Sally Field gave a moving speech to a large
audience. The national Chair of the Planned
Parenthood Board flew from New York City to sit next to Sally Field. Local politicians vied for an appearance standing
near her.
Autographs on the invitation to the Planned
Parenthood event.
Diane started to understand my close friendship
with Craig. An event that really
cemented my connection with him was one icy winter day when I had fallen coming
down the front door steps and dislocated my shoulder. Talk about pain! Craig was visiting me and heard me
screaming. He knew enough about the
human body that he was able to pop my shoulder back into its joint. What bliss!
After that, I trusted him implicitly.
We would give each other neck and back massages and scratch each other’s
back. Craig was easy for me to talk with. We both had technical backgrounds and
interests, and we had no romantic interest in each other.
Diane and I purchased two futons with
bedding and set them up in the lower-level entertainment area. We asked a group of Columbia friends down for
a weekend visit of swimming in the lake, hot tubbing, and eating good
food.
We got estimates on a two-welled boat dock
with an attachment for two waverunners, so the next time we had guests down, we
could take them on a boat ride and let them use the waverunners. Why two waverunners? When we went to test ride one with formidable
Diane in the driver’s seat, the whole thing tipped over when I got on behind
her, as that made too much weight on top.
One rider was OK, but two women of our combined weight were too much. We
would each have our own waverunner.
Picture of a Yamaha waverunner.
The next ASA conference was in August 1993,
and the Caucus for Women in Statistics asked me to be one of the speakers for
their session on “Can a Statistician Earn a Living on Her Own?” The first speaker owned her own consulting business
with many employees, including several statisticians, and the second speaker worked
with a group of statisticians. I was the
third and last speaker, and I entitled my talk “And then there was one.” It was a large room with a standing-room only
audience of men and women who showed a great deal of interest in being a
consultant.
Diane went with me to the conference and
toured San Francisco while I was at the meetings. She and I went for dinner with other women
from the caucus at Fisherman’s Wharf who taught us how to eat with chopsticks. After the meetings, we drove north to the
Muir Woods to see the large sequoias, and then further north to scenic Bodaga
Bay to spend the night. The next morning,
we drove further north to the Russian River Valley and cut inland through Santa
Rosa to Sonoma. We visited a couple of
wineries before returning to the San Francisco airport and the trip home.
Towering sequoias in Muir Woods.
In the fall, we were back in California for
another annual Planned Parenthood conference.
Forest fires were creating smoggy conditions with smoke and ash
particles in the air. While Diane was in
meetings, I spent my days working on my computer in the hotel room while
watching the coverage of the fires on the TV.
One night, we were given a tour of the Paramount movie studios in
Hollywood.
Before long, Diane decided to resign her
position with Planned Parenthood. There
would be no more partying at conferences with Planned Parenthood people. When I first started asking her to move to
the lake, I would say “You have talked about owning your own restaurant, but
that entails a lot of risk and hard work.
Instead, why don’t you come to live at the lake and cook for me and our
friends.” I didn’t want her to worry
about her personal finances, so I reassured her that I would put her on the
payroll of SIS and cover her health insurance and an IRA-SEP contribution
toward her retirement. Yes, I needed to
generate the income to pay those costs, but they were all deductible as
business expenses as well. As a bonus, I
promised she would also enjoy the vacations.
We agreed that her work for SIS would
consist of her doing everything she could to keep me producing billable
hours. For example, it might take me 45
minutes for the round trip to the Post Office to pick up the daily mail. Then if there were checks to deposit, it
might take another half-hour to drive to the bank. If I were in the office, I could be working and
logging billable hours all that time. She
could do other SIS work, such as invoicing and editing of written materials. She could also perform household tasks, like
cleaning the house, doing the laundry, preparing the meals and so forth. Diane didn’t have a problem agreeing to any
of this. She described her job as being
the Executive Director of Sweetwater Dr.
That must have been why she laughed and tore up a page of employee policies
I showed her on the first day of work.
After all, they had been written for my former Word Processing
employees.
I made regular trips to Wichita to take
care of my 80-year-old mother. Her
reaction to the news that Diane was leaving Planned Parenthood, would move to
the lake and be working for me was not what I expected. At first, she just said that she didn’t think
it was a good idea. I thought it would
be because she thought Diane would be taking advantage of me. However, when I asked her to explain, she
said she was afraid Diane would get bored living at the lake and leave me. She didn’t want that to happen. Wow!
There was a lot unsaid in those words.
She had seen me living with several other women only to see the
arrangements end, sometimes sadly. Regrettably,
I still couldn’t reveal or put a name to the full nature of my relationship
with Diane to my mother.
Diane resigned her position at the end of
1993, sold her house and moved her belongings to the lake. The winter was beautiful with views of the
eagles and other wildlife and no tourists with their big, loud boats stirring
up the water. The coves were the first
to ice up, but if it were cold enough, much of the lake was also frozen. We put up a clothes line between two trees
and kept the birdfeeders full, although the squirrels often got there first. With the advent of spring the shrubs the
landscapers planted began to bloom and the migrating birds stopped by.
Our boat dock was delivered with a boat
lift in one well and the other left clear for fishing. After the holidays we sunk our Christmas trees
in that well to attract fish. Our new
Bayliner Rendezvous had a flat deck, seating for guests and a tiny room holding
a portable potty so there would be no mooning over the side of the boat. Diane took a Coast Guard class, learned many
ways to tie ropes and received a certificate.
My old friend from the University, Jack Jones, asked us to start sampling
lake water from prescribed locations and processing them for pick up and
evaluation. We fished a lot, both from
our dock and the boat. Diane became
experienced at fish cleaning and removing catfish skin, not to mention cooking
our catch.
Me sitting in boat’s captains seat wearing
t-shirt that says: “Statistics means never having to say you’re certain.”
Around this time, I enjoyed meeting Sue, a
new Searle employee. She was a section
head and the first lesbian I encountered at Searle. She was from Chicago and had a street-smart demeanor. She invited us to meet her partner, Carmen,
who immigrated from Cuba with her parents during the time of the 1980 Mariel
boatlift. They visited us several times
at the lake, and asked us to their house in St. Louis where they lived with
Carmen’s mother.
In May 1994, Diane and I made a short visit
to Key West, flying into a nearby airport and renting a car. Paulette joined us from Miami, using the
sleeper sofa in our room at the Rainbow House, a lesbian hotel. Free of inhibitions, we swam nude in their
swimming pool. Breakfast was
supplemented with the mangos that fell from their tree. Key West had many destinations that we
explored. The Little White House was
where Harry Truman, the President from Missouri, liked to spend his winters
after WWII. Besides being famous for its
six-toed cats, the Hemmingway House was the first house in Key West to have
indoor plumbing. While living there in
the 1930s, Ernest Hemingway wrote his classic novels “For Whom the Bell Tolls”
and “To Have and Have Not.” Our main
reason for visiting the Audubon House was to view the drawings of birds in
their natural habitat by John James Audubon. Between visits to these sites, we had lunch at
a friendly local restaurant on Duval Street.
It was there I learned to love Key Lime Pie. That evening, we took a sunset cruise on a
small sailing vessel whose female captain was recommended by our hotel.
Six-toed cat (remember the dewclaw on the
side of the front leg).
In September 1994, we made another short
trip, this time to the neighboring state of Arkansas. Our destination was Blanchard Springs Caverns
as Diane and I had discovered we both enjoyed touring caverns. Blanchard is the only tourist cave owned by
the United States Forest Service, and the only one owned by the Federal
government outside the National Park System.
Unfortunately, our visit was after Labor Day, so the elevators to the
lower levels were closed, but what we did see of this live cave system was
beautiful. The attraction in Mountain
View that night was an Ozark Music Show.
When they started singing about “the blood of the lamb,” it was time for
us to go. In the morning we visited the
Craft Village at the Ozark Folk Center before driving back to what I was now happy
to call OUR home.
When SIS was referred to Hoffman-LaRoche Pharmaceutical, I jumped at the opportunity to develop the statistical methods needed for one of their bioassays. Rather than wanting to discover a new drug, they needed to estimate the potency (or activity) of substances being developed for use in human clinical trials. The major substance I dealt with was a type of interferon referred to as a PEGylated interferon, or PEGASYS. It was for the potential treatment of chronic hepatitis C and the hepatitis B virus infection. The assay had some difficult characteristics. Atia, the person I worked with at Roche, and I needed to work on alternatives until we were comfortable with the results. Then we needed to show that the assay and the computational method we used met all the criteria for assay validation required by both the relevant United States and European Union agencies.
In June 1995, Diane and I took another
two-week vacation with Olivia. We flew
to Anchorage, Alaska for a pre-cruise adventure. Diane was masterful at the hotel where all
the Olivia women were trying to check in at once, crowding the check-in desk. She used her big voice as a microphone and asked
the women to line up in orderly lines to receive their room keys, which they
quickly did. It would not be the last
time she was to assume that role. I
became the unofficial sign holder for lines at the train station. We took the train with the special Olivia
cars up to the Denali National Park. Along
the way, Diane and many other women took turns standing between the train cars
to take pictures of the mountain since the sky was clear. The next day, vans took us into the park to view
the wildlife, including and the one and only golden eagle I ever saw and a
mother bear with her twins, identifiable as they walked across a glacier.
Pictures of Denali and a golden eagle.
After a night in Anchorage, another train
took us to Seward, so that we could board boats for a tour of Resurrection Bay
while our cruise ship was made ready. We
saw many animals in and around the water, including puffins, sea lions, seals,
and mountain goats. Returning to the
harbor, we boarded the Royal Cruise Line’s ship bound for Vancouver, BC. Even though it had happened six years
earlier, I still heard angry talk from both the ship’s crew and passengers
about the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, which we avoided. We
were able to view several large glaciers that flowed into the sea. The cruise ship visited Juneau, Skagway, and Ketchikan. From the decks of the ship, the Olivia women
enjoyed watching breaching humpback whales.
It was daylight during our cruise through the inland passage on our way
to Vancouver, so we could watch the killer whales (orcas) work together to
corral and kill their prey, especially seals.
Pictures below of shaggy mountain goat and
our first puffin.
A pod of killer whales.
Later that summer, we had another visit by Diane’s
sister, brother-in-law, all three children, plus the oldest daughter, Tracy’s,
boyfriend. Again, they had much fun
swimming, and now the oldest enjoyed using the waverunners. After Tracy and her boyfriend were out one
afternoon riding a waverunner, Tracy said they had been concerned about the
people waving to them. They thought the
people were signaling that something was wrong.
They didn’t understand that it was only a friendly wave signaling
hello. Being from New Jersey, their
misinterpretation of the gesture revealed a cultural difference. Diane’s brother-in-law enjoyed fishing, and
her sister kept busy preparing meals for her family. The whole clan was picky, and she usually fixed
something different for each of them. I
had trouble with the familiarity between Tracy and her boyfriend, freely
visiting each other’s sleeping and dressing areas. I guess I was just an old fogey from a
different generation. It didn’t bother Diane.
In the fall, I was very pleased when the
doctor who had the lease with option-to-buy on the Fay St. business property completed
her purchase. It had provided good
income during the lease period. Now the
doctor would have all the responsibility of owning it. My decision to purchase the property had
proved to be a good investment.
Speaking of investments, through my
membership in the American Association of Individual Investors, I had been
attending the monthly Monday evening meetings of the subsection on Investing During
Retirement for several years while I was in St Louis. The other members found my attendance and interest
in the topic unusual, since I was still in my 50s and not retired. I was learning about all the options I would
have to consider, and I found the concepts easily translated to
before-retirement investment planning.
Once in a while, I found a national guest speaker scheduled for a
meeting of the entire St. Louis chapter who I wanted to hear. One of those was Gerald W. Perritt who was
the editor of The Mutual Fund Letter from which I had learned much about mutual
fund investing. I hired his investment
management services for a few years while I was at the lake and too busy to
manage my own investments wisely.
Meanwhile, Diane suggested we commission
Vincent, who had made the dragon, to also custom make a dining room table,
chairs, server, and several end tables. This talented artist not only was a
glass blower, but also made custom furniture, in this case using granite,
metal, and oak. The top of the table was
designed to reflect the ceiling of the dining room which was in a hexagonal
design of cedar wood. The server had a warming tray to keep food ready to eat.
The end tables were triangles, some isosceles and some equilateral which could
be mixed and matched to fit different spaces and allow re-arranging from
time-to-time. Guests could sit in the
dining room chairs and rotate to view the lake through all the surrounding
windows.
The year 1996 was a rough one because of my
mother’s, Almeda’s, declining health.
Ever since Diane moved to the lake in 1994, she went with me on the
monthly trips to visit my mother in Wichita.
Early on, Diane pointed out that my mother was not eating properly. She then cooked a month’s worth of easy to reheat
foods for transport and restocked my mother’s refrigerator, cleaning out old,
stale food. Mid-1996, we got a phone
call from Cole, who lived across the street from her. He noticed that my mother’s Wall St. Journal
had not been picked up. Concerned, he
used his key to go in the house and found Almeda on her bedroom floor. She was on her way to the bathroom in the
night, her ankle collapsed and she fell.
She hadn’t even been able to pull herself over to the telephone. Cole called the ambulance. Little did my mother know that would be the
last time she would be in her house.
We drove to Wesley Hospital as quickly as
we could and found my mother doing well.
She was diagnosed with drop foot, so she would need to use a walker or
wheel chair the rest of her life. The
problem was that there were too many steps and narrow doorways in her house,
such as the entrance from her bedroom to her bathroom. There were stairs into the house, either from
the garage or the front door. There was
a step down from the kitchen to the utility room and a drop down from the
dining room to the TV room.
The doctor refused to release Almeda to her
house. Diane and I realized we would
have to find her an assisted living residence.
The hospital social worker convinced my mother that she would need to
move from her house. At this time, there
weren’t many options in Wichita. She
didn’t want to buy an apartment, but instead just wanted to pay a monthly rent. Diane and I visited a facility that had been
converted from a motel to “assisted living.”
The shower was inside a tall bath tub that we couldn’t imagine an
elderly person being able to step into.
We got permission to take Almeda out of the hospital in a wheelchair so
she could tour the two places we thought might work. We then asked her which one she liked the
best. She chose one, and we furnished it
with care so she could leave the hospital and go to a comfortable living space.
Diane and I then had the task of disposing
of her car and selling her house. I was
very glad that mother had long ago asked her children and grandchildren to
please take what they wanted whenever they visited. That made it easy to arrange an estate sale. While staying at the house during our monthly
visits, we tidied up what was possible.
Diane went through the kitchen cabinets and drawers. An interesting find was a container of
arsenic and a bottle of apricot brandy. Almeda
had been a member of the Hemlock Society, an American right-to-die
organization, and she had been prepared to also “Do It Her Way.” The arsenic went to Columbia’s hazardous
waste and we drank the brandy.
Early in 1997, we took a break and
traveled to Florida for the scheduled launch of the shuttle Discovery. As luck would have it, this was the only
launch to date that blasted off ahead of schedule, and we missed it. There were still plenty of other available
activities in the area, like touring the Kennedy Space Center Museum. Paulette drove up and joined us for a tour of
the Ulumay Sanctuary with labeled viewing areas of birds and an opportunity for
viewing manatees. The next day we took a
boat tour on the St Johns River to view birds and wildlife. While I was always interested in nature,
Diane was happy with any opportunity to take photos.
Picture of a manatee off the beach.
Returning to work in Columbia, ABC
Laboratories assigned me the task of evaluating several computational procedures
for calculating a value that regulatory agencies routinely required from
toxicity studies. During toxicity
testing, organisms are exposed to increasing concentrations of a compound, and
the number of organisms alive and dead at each concentration are recorded. The agencies require an estimate of the
concentration at which 50% of the organisms die and a measure of its uncertainty. I used 50 data sets with each of five
programs for my study. In April, I
presented the results at a Symposium in St. Louis, MO. The paper, “Comparison of LC50 Results from
Commonly Used Computer Programs” was published in Environmental Toxicology
and Risk Assessment: 7th Volume.
ABC invited me to also present the results at a chapter meeting in
Kansas City.
Later that year, I really needed to schedule
my mother’s estate sale. I called and booked a recommended company. I didn’t want to be present during the
sale. The thought of seeing all the
people going through the home was just too depressing. After I received the proceeds and talked with
neighbors who visited it, I felt that I probably hadn’t chosen the best company
to conduct the sale. However, it was
over and done with. Then I put the house on the market, and it
sold quickly. I was able to take mother
to the closing in September, 1997 so she could meet the next owners of the
house that she had lived in for 40 years.
Diane and I continued to make monthly
trips to Wichita, but now we stayed in a motel.
As before, we were busy taking mother to doctors’ appointments,
restocking her over-the-counter and prescription drugs and preparing her pill
dispensing containers. She really didn’t
enjoy living where she was. She spent
her days sitting in her chair-lift recliner watching TV and reading
newspapers. She did not participate in
any activities or get to know any of the other residents. She didn’t seem to have many visitors and
blamed us for “putting her” into a place too far from where she had previously
lived. We did our best to make her happy
during our visits. At the lake, I often
received calls in the middle of the night saying my mother had fallen, yet
again.
For a break, in December 1997 we traveled
to Hawaii with Olivia, flying to the island of Oahu early to tour the
island. Diane was already somewhat
familiar with Oahu as she had lived there the year her sister insisted on going
to college in Hawaii, and Diane wouldn’t let her go by herself. It was difficult for me to imagine, but Diane
actually tried to support them by selling encyclopedias door-to-door. Big surprise, Diane didn’t earn much money, her
sister didn’t stay in college long, and they were soon back in New Jersey. We were lucky that our cruise was on the
American Hawaii Cruises’ SS Independence, a beautiful American-made ship with
many Hawaiian artifacts on display. We
cruised to the islands of Kauai, Maui, Hawaii, then back to Oahu.
Diane and I had booked a cottage on Maui
and flew back to that island. We visited
several gardens of colorful protea with their cone-like heads or cluster of
long, tubular flowers. Diane’s drive on
the road to Hana was challenging, but the fresh seafood and time on the beaches
were very enjoyable. There are no private
beaches in Hawaii, not even for hotels.
We walked along the board walk and went into the expensive hotels to see
the priceless art on display.
Protea flowers
Diane learned a good lesson when swimming
on the Maui beaches. We wore our glasses
to watch the scenery while leisurely swimming.
When heading to shore, Diane turned her back on the ocean and was hit by
a big wave, tumbling her. She lost her
glasses and pride, but luckily a young man quickly retrieved the glasses, and
she learned to never turn her back on the ocean. I also learned one lesson on Maui. We had signed up for the Haleakalā High
Observatory tour during which you go from sea level up to 10,000 feet, and I
got altitude sickness for the first time in my life. The only saving grace was at the top, I saw a
blooming Yellow Hibiscus, the rare state flower of Hawaii.
Diane and I had over five years of working
well together as a team, each taking the lead and having control in her area of
expertise. That continued to be the
case, but then there were the fuzzy areas. For example, unlike the fun we had
constructing the Alaska trip album, we were unable to agree on how to assemble
the photo album for Hawaii. One of us
wanted to do the album in chronological order, first the Olivia cruise and then
the Maui stay, while the other wanted to include the post-cruise Maui stay along
with the Maui shore trip while on the Olivia cruise. We were not able to reconcile this difference. The album was never finished.
The nature of our lovemaking also
changed. It’s not unusual for couples to
lose the urgency of sexual attraction, and that happened with us too. We no longer needed to make love every
night. True to her nature, Diane was
exerting more control, stopping me from initiating the process with her, rather
wanting to be the one making love to me, not the one being made love to. I ultimately
stopped objecting and just let her have her way. She certainly didn’t mind. I still enjoyed
her lovemaking, and she seemed to enjoy herself as well.
Diane started meeting with local Democrats. Living with Diane, a lifelong Democrat, only
intensified my identification with the Democratic Party. She located the Camden County Democratic
Party leaders, although they didn’t have many followers. The lake and surrounding rural area were
conservative and usually Republican. Despite
this, we both supported and Diane worked diligently for the election of a
smart, thoughtful woman, Gale Kessler, to run against Blaine Luetkemeyer for
the Missouri House of Representatives. Gale
was an eloquent speaker for the rights of the citizens of rural Missouri. However, the fact that she was sophisticated,
dressed elegantly and did not look like a typical rural Missouri woman may have
cost her the election, even though she did remarkedly well. Maybe any Democrat who wasn’t conservative
couldn’t win in the lake area.
Politics was just one of the reasons we
began to reconsider our lives away from Columbia. We still enjoyed seeing our friends when they
visited. I met Diane’s longtime friends,
Mary and Christine, and Ellen continued to visit with her various love
interests. We also met new friends. Sue and Sheri introduced us to their friend
Mary Greer who was a lawyer and prosecuting attorney for Morgan County. She loved flamingos. We met Kay and Evelyn who moved to the lake
from California and lived on a wooded lot outside of Eldon, MO. But for most of our Columbia friends, the
newness of visiting the lake had worn off.
Plus, Diane and I couldn’t agree who was the best captain of our boat,
which probably intruded on the enjoyment of our passengers. She finally ran into a dock, damaging our
boat, and we decided to sell it. The
local cultural opportunities consisted of the Ozark Music Shows and one
multi-plex theater. We started talking
about moving back to Columbia where we still had our dentists, doctors, and
hair stylists.
Unexpectedly, I got a call from the
assisted living facility saying they had taken my mother to Wesley Hospital
because she was bleeding from her rectum.
Doctors were running tests on her, but she wasn’t listed as
critical. It took us a couple of days to
prepare to leave, and by the time we got there my mother was mad at me saying I
had “done her wrong.” She had been
hallucinating, and thought she saw her grandchildren in the hallway outside her
room. She thought that meant she was
about to die, and I hadn’t told her.
After I reassured her that I had not called them to come and that they
were not there, she warmed up. I noticed
a brownish stain on the mat under her that looked like dried blood. I asked the nurses about it, and they
demurred. I remember her turning off the
TV when she was ready to go to sleep by mimicking a TV character. She pointed the oxygen monitor on her finger
at the TV like a remote, saying “It’s time for you to go.”
The telephone in her room at the assisted
living facility where Diane and I were sleeping rang in the middle of that
night. To my surprise, I was told my
mother was dying and was asked if I wanted any measures taken to keep her alive. I paused and then said no, knowing that is
what she would have wanted. They should
have known this as she had a DNR order posted at the door to her hospital room.
I quickly dressed and went to the
hospital. I wasn’t sad that she was dead;
I shed no tears. She had been ready for
some time, and so was I. However, I did order
an autopsy believing something was just not right about the way she died. It found a hole in her stomach that leaked
stomach acid onto the wall of the splenic artery, enabling it to start leaking. During the night, she bled to death. It happened fast without her awakening. In some ways what occurred was not surprising
as between her arthritis pain and what she called her adhesion pain, she took a
large number of ibuprofens each day for many years.
What was surprising was that they had done
an endoscopy when she was admitted to the hospital and not discovered the hole
in her stomach. I spoke with the doctor
who did the procedure. He was very
apologetic, saying there was so much blood in her stomach that he wasn’t able
to see the hole. He felt badly that he
had missed it. Another doctor avoided
any notion that he was to blame. When I
thanked her family doctor for her care over the years, she was quick to say
that she felt really bad that she hadn’t done enough. I agreed inside, but left it alone. After all, if they had found the hole, mother
would never have agreed to surgery.
My
mother, Almeda Sebaugh, died on April 26, 1998, two days after her 85th
birthday. My father had also died when
he was 85, although it wasn’t this close to his birthday. Both of them died at least partially as a
result of medical issues that had troubled them for many years. My father’s problems with his dementia and colostomy
and my mother’s problems with her arthritis, adhesions and peripheral
neuropathy indirectly led to each of their deaths. I could only try to cope as best I could with
my own medical issues and try to learn from their experiences.