One Family's Story

by Harriet Tramer
(Cleveland Heights, Ohio)

I've written a book - Rounding the Circle of Love: Growing Up as She Grows Old published by LadyBug Press. It will be available for sale within the next few months.

It deals with challenges that families - particularly families who opt for residential care - face as they support their elders.

The book includes a story - One Family's Story - that might be representative of what some folks in this position experience.

The first segment of this story is included below. Other segments will follow.

Harriet Tramer

Just as Jon was pulling out of his driveway one morning, his cell phone rang. And a voice at the other end delivered the news every child of an aging parent dreads hearing. Jake, his father, had fallen and broken his leg. It was a serious injury, one that could even prove life threatening for a man his age.

Jon ignored speed limits as he made his way to the hospital; nothing other than the norm for him. And before he even got there he called his sister, Beatrice, at the school where he worked and told her what had happened.

Although Jon had expected to hear a long period of silence as she absorbed the news, she immediately started screaming, “How did we ever let this happen? Why weren’t we keeping a closer watch on him?”

Jon’s response to those questions – which Beatrice shrieked in a tone tinged with hysteria - was swift and definitive. He stopped by Jake’s apartment whenever he possibly could, and he even paid some of his bills. What more could anybody expect of him? Accidents happen and Jake’s falling simply had to be considered something that was unfortunate but essentially unavoidable.

But Beatrice refused to be pacified. She kept screaming the same thing – “How did we ever let this happen” – over and over. And, his patience near the breaking point, Jon told her that he was hanging up and that she should come to the hospital and see for herself what happening.

That conversation – screaming match actually – was the first time in years Jon and Beatrice had done more than glance briefly at one another during family events; hardly surprising considering as they lived in two different worlds.

Jon was a very successful businessman if he did not say so himself. His cars were the latest and the greatest and his homes were spread across three states, even during a time when many families were facing foreclosures.

Days on the golf course, at a country club or in some exotic vacation spot were not his things. But long hours in front of a computer, a cell phone pushed up tight against his ear, was a daily routine with him. He made deals and deals had made him into what he wanted to be.

His sister Beatrice on the other hand would not have known the difference between a stock and a bond; nor cared. Her life was devoted to the children she taught at a school for special needs kids. And while Jon had a knack for getting the best bang for his buck, she could work magic with those kids.

Even kids who were essentially non-verbal would start chirping away when she talked to them. And those who had long established patterns of becoming agitated at the slightest provocation – a lost toothbrush, a pencil out of place - became calm in her presence.

How did she do it? Well, there was something almost spiritual about the way she approached her work. When she looked at the kids she taught, she did not see the same disturbed youngsters everybody else did. Rather, in her eyes, they became students willing and anxious to learn everything they could. It would just take a little while to break through the “odd” behaviors that prevented them from progressing.

And as he worked with them, she made those barriers fall. Many of her students ended up being mainstreamed into “regular” classes, eventually graduating from high school or even from college. In time, the calmness and determination they showed when she worked with them became their accustomed way of doing things no matter who was around.

Beatrice, however, was anything but calm and controlled when she arrived at the hospital. Rushing through the place until she found Jon, she did not even bother to say, “Hello” before she launched into her tirade.

“Where is he? Why aren’t you with him?” she demanded to know.

And instead of yelling back at her, Jon - a past expert at dealing with clients who become emotional - tried to calm Beatrice by explaining that Jake was under heavy sedation and she could not see him now. But she refused to be deterred and not knowing what else he could do, Jon led her down the hall to their father’s room.