Naked by any other name is still Naked!

After Kenny passed and I no longer worked as a caregiver for Mark I volunteered at  Sangre de Cristo Hospice.  I was a volunteer in the 11th hour program.  This just means that I would have finished my job when the client passed to the other side.  My job was to set with the client while the caregiver ran errands or just took a break from every day life.  Being the kind, caring person I am, I was sometimes called to the bedside when my client was taking their final breathe. Unlike a lot of people I have an acceptance of dying and a secure knowledge that we are all going to a better place.

In this capacity, my last job with hospice was for a man on the southside who cared for his 90 year old invalid mother.  He had several bad experiences with people he hired to set with her when he needed some one.  Seems he had several bad experiences with ladies taking coffee cups or small items just "walking off".  When he enrolled in the hospice program he was adamant that whoever came had to be honest.  After several volunteers were sent there he had given up on hospice was at the end of his rope as far as strangers in his home.  Hospice threw their hands in the air as it seemed to be a lost cause.  And then they tried one last hurrah, Lou Mercer.

By this time I had mostly given up hospice work, but Jolene asked me if I would just give this guy a break and if it did not work out they would let me leave.  I agreed.  The man called and explained that hospice had given him my name and number and would I just come and meet his mother.  What did I have to lose?  I agreed.  

When I arrived at the chosen day and time, he opened the door and looked me up and down.  He was a regular looking man of Spanish descent and looked fairly harmless, so I went in.  Mom was in the kitchen in a wheel chair and eating her breakfast which consisted of a pop tart and a cup of coffee.  I took a chair at the end of the table and she looked up at me.  She immediately smiled and her face lit up!  "Blue! Blue!"  I should note here that my eyes are blue and they stay that way as long as I am happy.  Sadness causes them to take a hazel hue, but I am rarely sad. So that day they were blue.

The son explained all the problems he had with sticky fingers and I explained that I did not have that problem.  He told me he would pay me to set with mother.  I told him I was a volunteer and did not accept money.  And so it began.  Momma and I were friends and he felt comfortable leaving us alone.  When he returned from whatever errand he had been on, he was surprised to see mother still happy.  

Since I would not take his money, he fell into the habit of buying me fruit juice.  The kind he bought was from Sam's and was called "Naked" because it had no artificial ingredients.  We fell into an easy relationship since his mother liked me and I liked her.  She could be a bit cantankerous at times, but I understood how hard it must be on both her and him.  I was happy to do what I could to ease the burden for both of them.  And the bottle of juice became a joke with us.  

"Hey, Lou!  I got Naked for you!"  "OMG!  I hope that is in a bottle!"

He did not call me to often, because he felt he was imposing on me.  I explained that I had no other clients and I actually had come to love his mother.  I think what we developed was a comradery.  Mutual respect and a genuine caring for each other.  I met and loved his sisters and brother.  I am not sure they knew just what to think of the relationship, but they accepted it at face value.   His sister came in laughing one time because they had been shopping and he had to run to Sam's before they could go home because, "I have to get Naked for Lou!"

I was a part of their life for several years before Momma passed.  She was my comrade.  He was my knight in shining armor.   

It is a part of my life that I shall miss until I take my last breathe.  But that is how grief is, isn't it?  At first it is sharp like a knife and cuts to the quick, but then it begins to become a dull ache, and finally it is just a big, empty hole in your soul.  

I still wait for the phone to ring and the voice on the other end telling me to look at the moon.  

"I see the moon; the moon sees me. The moon sees someone I want to see.                                                  So God bless the moon, and God bless me, and God bless the someone I want to see."

And now it is tomorrow.

 Life has a way of going on whether we like it or not.  It has been almost a week since my life was thrown into a bottomless pit, and yet the sun comes up every morning.  One day it snowed; the next the air conditioner kicked on to cool the  house.  I cooked a turkey and I burned the roaster beyond ever being useful again.  I swept the porch, but not the sidewalk.  I bought goose food.  I made coffee every morning.  Funny how the mundane works to keep us sane.

Covid 19 is still the number one story on the news, both here and abroad.  I mask up and go to the grocery only when I need something.  I wove a couple rows on my runner, washed the sheets on Jiraiya's bed and stared blankly at the television for several hours.  Life goes on.  Someday I am sure, life will again have meaning, but not right now.

If the church was open I could go set in the corner and talk this all over with God, but it is not, so I do the next best things.  I stand in my front yard early in the morning and watch the sun spread across the eastern sky.  I watch the birds shake themselves out of their stupor and rise against the sky in search of a fellow bird much as my soul rises in hope that this new day will be better.

And at night I search for the moon.  Sometimes it is full, which fills me with wonder.  Sometimes it is a crescent and sometimes it is dark, but always it is there.  As I watch it rise on the horizon, I know that some where, some how, I am not alone. I have a little trouble remembering when life was fun and I can not hear the laughter that used to live inside of me, but some how I know it is still there.

My hand reaches for the phone and then stops in mid air.  The number is dying in my head even as my hand retracts.  That part of my life is over.  It is over, but it is not forgotten.  It will live every day in my heart and someday, there will be a big harvest moon.  It will be a beautiful orange and it will make me smile.  And then, as now, the moon will enter a new phase and I will only see the outline of a cresent against a black sky.  

And maybe someday, I will smile again.