Stumbled upon a piece I wrote to make money while promoting a charity. Can’t help thinking about flooded Texans and how we all need help sometime or another. (9/25/91) – JDW
This is not about money. This is about people.
It’s about those who can, helping those who can’t. It’s about doing the right thing because it needs to be done.
This is about the United Way’s mission: to organize people who care about one another. It is not about 7 a.m. meetings where your boss stands up there and tells you your job is on the line because he expects 100% contributions from his department. Give or else. Guys like that give the United Way a bad name.
You’ll see the ads. You’ll hear the words. Maybe it’ll wash over you like the voice of some mall jeweler trying to convince men they can wear bracelets if you just think of them as “wrist chains.” Spare me the public service messages.
You’ll see the pictures. Heart-rending. Tear-jerking. Face it. Many of us have learned to tune out this charity stuff. Times are tough. If we worried about everybody who needed help, we’d have trouble making it through the day ourselves. Think positive, avoid the negative. Maybe buy a lottery ticket.
But get past the slick marketing and you discover real people. Fact is, this year, in the metropolitan area, one out of every three of us will receive help from a United Way agency. One out of every three of us.
Thousands of our neighbors. Our children. Our parents. The battered, the abused, the handicapped, the illiterate, the pregnant. The emotionally disturbed, the physically disabled. The small and the weak. Actual human beings.
“What does United Way mean to me?,” puzzles 84-year-old Rhoda Sankey. “It’s meant everything. It’s given me a new life. See, before Vera came down to the Senior Center, when she was home, I couldn’t be gone very long and leave her, because she’s at least 95% total helpless. Everything she needs, everything that has to be done, has to be done for her. After we found out about the Center, and she came down here, then that gave me free time to have a few hours to myself.
“When Vera is home, if I go outside to work in the garden, I have to keep one eye on the clock. Because every so often, I have to go in and see if she wants something. For instance, she’s supposed to have at least eight to 10 glasses of liquid a day. And, you know, that means every two or three hours, I have to get the bed pan.
“Every 4 hours she has to have her pain pill. Vera has these terrific headaches.
“After she wants up in the wheelchair, that’s where she stays. If she had to blow her nose, she can’t. If she gets something on her face, she can’t wipe it off. Get something crawling on your face, you’d know what it’s like, not to be able to reach up and get it.”
Vera is Rhoda’s 62-year-old daughter. Rhoda has been taking care of Vera now for 50 years. A half century. Since before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Vera has had two total hip replacement surgeries. Hinges. Otherwise, her whole body is stiff. She’s had over 20 operations. Her mind, sharp as the proverbial tack, is held prisoner by her own body. Fifty years, she’s been like that. Could’ve happened to any one of us.
“Vera had rheumatic fever when she was 11. It left her with rheumatoid arthritis. That’s what crippled her,” Rhoda explains. “A sinus infection went undiscovered by doctors for three months. Medication put her in a coma. They didn’t know if she’d come out of it. Her optical nerve was damaged. She can’t see to read. Bad liver, too.”
Her feet splayed out. Her knees buckled. All of her joints calcified together. As a child, a little girl who had once run and jumped and skipped, Vera spent a year and 14 days in Emmanuel Hospital without ever coming home. Rhoda visited twice a day. Fifty years ago.
“No one, and I mean no one, thought Vera was going to live,” Rhoda remembers. “I didn’t think about it myself. I just figured the Lord would take her or He’d have a purpose for her.”
Vera was 11 when she went into the hospital and she was 12 when she finally did come home. She weighed 35 pounds. “That was it,” Rhoda states simply. “I’ve had the total care of her all her life.”
With Vera confined to a wheelchair, Rhoda became confined to a life by her daughter’s side. House arrest. “IT WAS 36 YEARS BEFORE I EVEN HAD ONE VACATION, AND IT WAS FOR 5 DAYS.” That’s about 13,149 days without one off.
Next weekend, think about that.
“I used to be able to put her in a car and take her out. But, the last 20, 25 years, I can’t do that. I’ve been very confined. On Sunday someone would come and make it possible for us to go to church. Otherwise, at home Vera sat with her TV, or….” Rhoda’s voice trails off.
No telling what Rhoda might have done with her life. She was only 33 when Vera took ill. “I never had any thoughts about doing anything else, I guess, because I couldn’t have anything else to do.” She laughs nervously. “I mean, there simply wasn’t time.”
The woman must be a saint. An angel of mercy maybe.
She’d be the first to deny it. “I just do what needs doing. I don’t let things bother me. I’ve learned to be content with whatever state I’m in,” Rhoda confides. “I never worry. Because worry doesn’t do any good. I try to make the best of it.”
The United Way – and the donations which support United Way agencies, like the Volunteers of America Senior Day Care Center – has helped immeasurably.
“It’s been such a blessing for Vera to be down here. If it wasn’t for the Center I might burn out, and Vera would have to go into a nursing home. That day-in and day-out, 24 hours a day… year after year…,” Rhoda’s voice grows tired at the thought. “If I had one of those things on me (pedometer), I don’t how many miles I walk a day.” Figure six times daily with the bedpan. Over fifty years. That’s 24,638 trips.
How many nights have you had all you could handle just to give your own teeth a quick brush?
“Most people, when they get ready to go to bed, they can just run and get ready and go to bed,” Rhoda offers one small example of life as a sole caregiver. “From the time I get Vera out of the wheelchair, it takes one half hour to get her all taken care of, before I can go in and go to bed.”
So much love, such devotion does not go unrewarded and after fifty years, it is not taken for granted. “The last thing at night I hear when I go to bed,” says the proud parent, “is ‘Night, night, see you in the morning. Thank you for everything.’ That’s the last words I hear at night.
“When I get Vera up in the morning, I have to pull her head to the edge of the bed – get the wheelchair right up against it.” Rhoda looks frail, your basic little old lady, but she has the handshake of a power forward. “Then I take the sheet and put her feet over to the edge. Then I take her head and pull it over ONTO the wheelchair. Then I take the other sheet up and lift the rest of her over into the wheelchair.”
“That’s after I’ve raised the hospital bed as high as it will go,” contributes Vera.
Rhoda doesn’t have help. Never has. At least not until they discovered the Center. “No, I do it all myself. I always did it all myself,” Rhoda explains. “Something had to be done and I just did it.” Fifty years doing it alone.
What does the Center mean to Vera, no longer confined? “I can put what the Center has meant to us in one word,” says the object of all this undivided attention. She’s smiling. “It’s awesome, dude.”
Vera is a happy woman. “The Center means… everything. Time away from home. I can be with friends. Do activities, like cooking, spreading peanut butter, Philadelphia cheese on sandwiches. Help making different things, like zucchini bread. Bible study. French class. Sometimes one of the help will read a story. Planting flowers. On Tuesday we have a garden club, the Alder Street Garden Club. Wednesday and Friday, we play
bingo. That’s fun to do. Sometimes we get the guitar out and have a singalong.” At the Center, Vera, very much the music lover, is learning to play the tongue chimes.
She stays busy. “We play ‘the word game.’ You try to see how many different words you can get from another word. For instance, yesterday, we played ‘British Columbia.’ We’ve got 50 words so far. Anyway, the Center, it’s just a real wonderful place.
“In August we had our picnic at Laurelhurst. Once in a while we get to go on a little drive. At Christmas, we do special things. Last Christmas really was a fun time. We were invited to the holiday party at Standard Insurance. Then Xerox put on their party right here at the Center. We just have a lot of fun, we do.”
The United Way – and your donations – make it possible.
“What’s nice,” Rhoda adds, “I get to go, too! I get in on all of it. Last year they gave everybody a beautiful blanket. I got a blanket. Vera got a blanket. I come down once in a while to have lunch and just visit.”
“At home all I could do was eat, or watch TV, listen to the radio, or take care of the telephone,” explains Vera. “You take that kind of an environment to live in day after day, it kinda gets tiresome.” Fifty years. “At the Center, I’m doing
different things. I meet new people. It just means everything to me. I love it!”
What is it like to take care of a child for 50 years? “Well, it’s hard to put it in words,” Rhoda muses. I’ll bet. “WE JUST TAKE LIFE AS IT COMES. I’M NOT ONE WHO GETS DISCOURAGED.”
If it needs to be done, Rhoda does it. That’s why she’s speaking up. That’s why she supports the United Way campaign. “There might be a mother and child like us out there who doesn’t know about the Center. I wish everyone could know about it, and understand. We have Alsheimers’ patients here, others have had a stroke. One lady’s going to turn 100 soon. They can come here and that gives the caregiver time for themselves.” A respite.
“When you have somebody who’s home and you’re confined all the time…,” Rhoda says. “We just went along like everything was all right. That’s all we knew.”
Rhoda treated Vera as if she was, well, normal. “Parents, don’t ever treat your child like they’re an invalid. Treat ’em like they’re a human being and like they ARE okay. (“She’s telling the truth,” Vera pipes up.) Because when you do, that gives them confidence. That helps them. And it will also give you a happier life, too.
“I try to be as independent as I can,” Vera says. “I’m very thankful to the Lord that I took after my mother in that way. Because you’ve never seen a more independent person than my mother. And I thank the Lord for that.”
There are three kinds of physical limitations at work here. Vera literally can’t move. As sole caregiver, Rhoda can’t go anywhere. And without the help of a United Way agency, Vera’s world pretty much ends at her bedroom door.
Fifty years. A mother and a daughter. Today because of United Way, today Rhoda gets a break, a few hours to herself. The weight of the world off her shoulders. Vera gets out of the house, meets new friends, wins cupcakes playing blackjack. She has fun.
This is not a sob story. Without United Way, it could have been.
This is a story with a happy ending.
(SIDEBAR)
With some of the first free time she’s had in fifty years, Rhoda visits “shut-ins.” While Vera is goofing off at the Senior Center. Because people like you cared enough to give to United Way.
“Deciding how much to give to United Way is difficult with so many competing demands for your dollars,” says Robert Ridgley, 1991 Campaign Chairman. “But as responsible members of this community, it’s time for us to rise to the challenge of helping those less fortunate.”
Budget cuts aren’t coming out of politicians’ salaries, you know. “Health and human service programs have suffered sustained budget cuts in recent years despite increased demands on them for help,” Ridgley explains. “It’s up to us to raise the necessary funds to meet community needs. Please consider giving at least one hour’s pay per month. To the people you help, your contribution makes all the difference.”
Only 15% of the money United Way raises goes for administration. When you give to United Way, your money goes to actually help people in need. Please give. If you have any questions about United Way, call 228-9131.
The Senior Center (232-4117) is looking for volunteers. Seems Vera may be holding a few aces up her sleeves and they need someone to keep an eye on her during those blackjack games.
Rhoda and Vera didn’t bring it up. But, well, here we are in the Silicon Rain Forest and what with all the computer wizards and multi-millionaires we have around here… doesn’t it seem like somebody could put that bright mind of Vera’s together with a computer she could operate? She’s willing to learn.
I’ll bet Rhoda is willing to help. I’ll bet you an hour’s pay.