Gracious Living (eBook)

and Hospice 101

Rebecca McCurdy (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
388 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3178-0322-3 (ISBN)

Infos

This book is written in two forms, one fictional and one instructional, to introduce the reader to what hospice care is all about. First, Gracious Living is a story that takes you inside the lives of hospice patients as they walk toward the end of their lives, and attempts to show, from the inside out, what issues and influences really matter at that stage of life. The characters in this book, both patient and volunteer, are products of the author's imagination... although informed by what both patients and volunteers have taught her over thirty years of experience. Secondly, Hospice 101 introduces you to some of the skills and strategies developed over the years for supporting those facing the challenges and struggles of terminal illness. It is written specifically for those who are interested in hospice volunteering, but it offers information that I believe will also be helpful to friends and family members who wish to support those they love who are in the last season of their lives.

Rebecca Spencer McCurdy served for 30 years as the Manager of Volunteers at Ohio's Hospice LifeCare in Wooster, Ohio. In that capacity she recruited, trained, and assigned the volunteers of that hospice, in order to qualify them to provide patients care. She provided them with the emotional and logistical support they needed to carry out these demanding volunteer assignments. Through this experience she has come to believe that caring for others in the dynamic and demanding last season of life is often a life-transforming experience for those who give themselves to this work.

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This book is written in two forms, one fictional and one instructional, to introduce the reader to what hospice care is all about. First, Gracious Living is the story of Kate, a woman in her 40's, with a diagnosis of terminal cancer, and her relationship with her hospice volunteer, whom she has asked to record the memories from her life. It is a story that takes you inside the lives of both Kate, and her hospice volunteer, as Kate walks toward the end of her life, and attempts to show, from the inside out, what issues and influences really matter at that stage of life. The characters in this book, both patient and volunteer, are products of the author's imagination... although informed by what both patients and volunteers have taught her over thirty years of experience. Secondly, Hospice 101 introduces you to some of the skills and strategies developed over the years for supporting those facing the challenges and struggles of terminal illness. It is written specifically for those who are interested in hospice volunteering, but it offers information that I believe will also be helpful to friends and family members who wish to support those they love who are in the last season of their lives.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

Kate’s Memories

The first time Luke made love to me was in a strawberry field under the light of the midnight sun.

Don’t you think that’s a terrific beginning? I’ve been planning that opening sentence for years. I thought, just as soon as I get a little time, I’m going to write down all my memories and I’m going to start with that sentence, “The first time Luke made love to me was in a strawberry field under the light of the midnight sun.”

It’s hard to think that time is running out for writing down my memories. I’m only 46 years old. There should be all the time in the world; but it’s already too late for me to write it by hand in the little blank book Anya gave me for Christmas last year. I’m just too weak. I’ve mostly come to terms with that now. I’ve mostly accepted that now is the only time there is and that’s why I had to find another way to get this all written down.

I think it will be a comfort to Luke to have my memories after the rest of me is gone. And the kids. They will be grateful to have it. And to tell you the truth, so far, the worst pain I’ve had from this cancer in my breast has been the pain of realizing that I will never know my grandchildren, and worse yet, egocentric woman that I am, the pain of realizing my grandchildren will never know me. I mean, I literally feel a stab of pain in my chest when I think about Phoebe and Teague and Anya having babies and me not being there for it.

Well, there’s not much I can do about the baby part, but damn it, I intend for those grandchildren to know me when they’ve grown up a bit. At least I intend to lay myself out enough here, that they’ll know me as more than just a name on a gravestone.

Well, and too, I just want to spend some of this precious time remembering.

So there are plenty of good reasons to write… not the least of which is that I have this great opening sentence: “The first time Luke made love to me was in a strawberry field under the light of the midnight sun.”

I think the thing that has held me back before when I’ve tried to write down my memories was the thought of trying to get it all in order. But hey, who cares about order at this point? It’s one of the prerogatives of knowing you’re dying that you get your own way a lot. There’s so much freedom in this dying thing. I mean, who’s going to say to a dying woman, ‘no, you have to tell your story in chronological order?’ Nobody. I’ll tell it in heart order, because I don’t know how much longer my head can stay clear, so I need to just let myself go and find the stories in whatever order they come, or I might not get to the good stuff in time.

Actually, making love in a strawberry field has its drawbacks. We squished a lot of strawberries that night… and got pretty muddy too. I’ve never even tried to get the stains out of the dress I wore that day. But I still have it. I think of it as my wedding dress.

And the messiness is important too. I don’t want to leave out the messiness. I want to remember my whole life… strawberry juice stains, blood stains, tear stains and all.

Luke and I met in May of 1979 in Valdez, Alaska. He had lived and worked in Fairbanks for several years. I had come to Alaska from Kentucky the previous summer to visit my sister in Anchorage and could never make myself leave again. I got a job waitressing in Valdez for the summer. There were good tips to be had at the Hungry Hound Saloon.

Even that far south in Alaska it doesn’t get truly dark most of May, June or July. I’d serve tourists all day and then fishing crew guys and guys from the pipeline and refinery until late into the night. Luke was working 14- or 15-hour days too. It was just seasonal work for both of us, so we took all the hours they’d give us.

When I think back on that summer in Valdez, I mostly remember the noise. When it never gets truly dark, it never gets truly quiet either. People are always forgetting what time it is. The neighbors might decide to mow their law at 2 o’clock in the morning. They forget to call their kids in. The neighborhood drunk who would drink till closing time in another place and time, just keeps on drinking and singing and strolling down the not dark street, till he passes out, usually mid-song, usually right in front of your bedroom window at 4 o’clock in the morning.

In a place where it never gets dark, you can block out the light at night with a blanket or tin foil. It’s harder to block out the noise.

Inside the Hungry Hound the noise was deafening and constant. Everything from “Forever in Blue Jeans” to Pink Floyd blared endlessly from the juke box. The rednecks and the college boys hated each other’s music and hollered and hissed when the “other guys” took their turn at the old Wurlitzer box that Rupert Gordon, my boss, somehow kept in working condition.

Plates and glasses were always crashing to the floor and shattering, too…which, of course, is always reason enough for a drunken crowd to cheer. From about 5 pm on, when the first of the oil crews got free, nobody could hear a thing that was said below the level of a scream.

It was just a few weeks into this exhausting and rowdy summer that I first noticed Luke. He was one of the regulars in the Hound and he always sat at one of my tables. I got the distinct impression that he had noticed me first.

Luke was a flirt… still is actually. He would make eye contact with me and hold it with those bedroom eyes of his till I couldn’t take it anymore.

I didn’t take him a bit seriously at first. He was one of many flirts. There are never enough women to go around in Alaska, and so, it follows that there is no such thing as an ugly woman there. At first Luke’s flirting was as natural a part of the background noise at the Hungry Hound as the juke box and the crashing plates.

After a while though, he began to stand out in the crowd. He started taking the trouble to clean up a bit before he came in for dinner for one thing. A man who smells of good soap, instead of some combination of dead fish and aftershave, is a very appealing man.

Also, Luke was polite to me. He always left very generous tips. And he was cute…. gorgeous, actually. You probably only see his receding hairline, but I can still see his bleached blond hair, his big brown soulful eyes, and his arms, tanned and muscular from all that heavy work on the boat.

He was a hunk… but more importantly he was funny. That man could make me laugh more than anyone I ever met. He laughed himself all the time… and it was so contagious, you would laugh with him even if you didn’t have a notion of what had struck him funny.

Well, anyway, he flirted like mad with me, but he never exactly hit on me. It was one of the things that made him stand out. Other guys would act like they were God’s gift to women and try to get whatever girl was waiting their table to sleep with them. Some of the girls went for it too. It’s heady stuff being considered a goddess just because you have two X chromosomes. Besides, we were young and mostly out on our own for the first time… and lonely. Hardly ever alone, but lonely anyway. All the flirting and sex was mostly a way to fight the loneliness. I was not planning to throw myself away like that, though. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life yet, but I sure planned to do something.

And Luke just kept on being polite. Every time he left the restaurant, he’d ask if I had a day off coming up. I hardly ever did. Luke’s crew didn’t go out Sundays, but I worked seven days a week most of the summer. Finally in early June, I told him I had a Sunday off coming up. He lit up like a lamp. Would I do him the honor of going out with him? Who could turn Luke Owens down when he was glowing like that?

He borrowed a skiff from a friend and took me out on the Sound. I’d been in Valdez for weeks, but I had mostly been stuck inside. Prince William Sound is breathtakingly beautiful. Just like everywhere else in Alaska, the stuff God has done is fantastic, and the stuff people have done is pretty shoddy. Out on the Sound it was all stuff God had done.

If I close my eyes and think about it long enough, I can still smell the way the breeze smelled that day out on the water… like God had crushed pine needles in his hand and then gently puffed in our direction. I can still feel the sting of the icy spray on my face… from that water that’s just melted from the face of the Matanuska Glacier. I can still taste the crab salad and the homemade bread Luke brought for our picnic. And the wonderful wine and the cherry tomatoes and olives we popped into one another’s mouths. And that sharp, luscious cheese, and those incredible chocolate truffles. God knows where he found such delicacies in Valdez. It was seduction, plain and simple.

This was long before the oil spill, and Prince William Sound reminded me then of the pictures I’d seen in books of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, unbelievably blue water and sky, surrounded by a ring of snow-capped mountains. It was all so beautiful and yet, even on a Sunday afternoon in June, not very crowded at all. Alaska is like that. There is so much room and so few people that places that would be mobbed down in the Lower 48 are practically empty there.

And I can still see him the way he was that day; wearing white shorts that showed his tan and a light blue, button down shirt, with rolled up sleeves. The way he handled the boat with such ease and the way he knew every inch of the coastline all seemed...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 26.6.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3178-0322-3 / 9798317803223