Gaudy Patter

Things haven't been going particularly well around here. Ella is between her first and second chemo treatments, and the nausea's started to kick in. She went to the hospital with a fever, so they wisely chose to admit her. The chemo left her open to a staph infection, most likely from close contact with my grandfather, a stroke survivor who's incontinent and requires constant care.

Usually a ball of fire, Ella spent most of her time sleeping, either in bed or before the electronic hearth of the living room Trinitron. She's got many amazing traits, but taking care of people is one of the things that seems to make her happiest. Laid low by the toxic soup coursing through her veins, she's entirely out of her element.

She's too weak to do all the things she usually does, but that doesn't mean she won't try. While Liz and I drove here from San Diego in October, she was power-walking the Race for the Cure. On the eve of her first chemo treatment, Dad and I were in Philly, sorting out my grandfather's house, but Liz bore witness to Ella's workout on the exercycle in her bedroom.

Twenty-five and a half miles. Everyone thought she was taking a nap until she emerged from her room, glistening and proud.

I check to make sure she has some water in her hand whenever she's awake. Eight to ten glasses each day is the recommended minimum, or so say the hospital's handouts.

I'm glad she felt up to joining us for Thanksgiving dinner. She always looks forward to preparing the giant meal with its familiar dishes. I started baking casseroles earlier in the week: green beans, mac and cheese, garlic mashed, acorn squash. One of the two vegetarians scheduled to appear -- my Aunt Beverly -- wasn't able to partake, even though she enjoys the November feast.

Bev had a stroke in her late 40s, about 13 years ago. Dad and Ella brought her out to live with them while she convalesced, and she now resides in an assisted-living facility for Jewish residents. (Bev converted back in the mid-70s, sometime before she moved to a kibbutz outside Tel Aviv. When I first learned what a kibbutz was, I painted mental pictures of my sassy aunt wisecracking with her friends as they picked olives and apricots beneath an unforgiving Mediterranean sun.)

Bev called the Sunday before Thanksgiving to ask for my dad. Her speech isn't that great, but before handing over the phone, I ascertained that she'd had a fall. Dad filled me in later: she'd passed out on Saturday night and fallen, waking up Sunday morning on the floor. The paramedics took her to Maricopa General.

When he returned later in the day from the hospital, the news was grim. Beverly has two previously undiagnosed tumors -- one in her lungs that's wrapped around her heart, and another in her brain that's made itself at home in the hemisphere not affected by the stroke. Stage four.

Stage five is the end of the scale.

My father is a self-confessed control freak. I can't imagine how he's handling this.

December 13:

Bev's radiation therapy for her brain tumor starts this week before she begins chemo for the pulmonary growth. Before I left, I heard my dad give a summary of recent developments over the phone to a relative:

"No, we're only 18 months apart. When I left her at the hospital, I was kind of devastated because these are things you never expect. Moved my dad out here about 8 or 9 weeks ago after he had a stroke, and I may have mentioned that my wife is ill with cancer at Mayo Clinic, but she's in a much better place. They caught it very early, but I'll tell you, this has been, this has been a wild 6 months. Beverly's never said to me anything like this, but she said, 'I'm afraid.'"

After several days of hospitalization with high fevers and a procedure to remove several blood clots, Ella's back at home, though I wonder if that's where she belongs. I believe that if my grandfather needs care, she'll put herself in danger helping him. There's very little I can do from my vantage point here in San Francisco, but I'm keeping an eye and ear on the situation.

My grandfather is debilitated, but day-to-day, he might be the healthiest of the ailing Thompsons. He's paralyzed on his right side, and his will to endure fades in and out, depending on his mood. While I was there, I fed him, helped him with his exercises, prepared his food, and provided other care. He likes someone to read him the Bible before he drifts off each night. At first, I was self-conscious about it.

I have a spiritual side, but I'm not any sort of believer. But this is an old man whose clock is running out, and I like to accommodate him however I can. The first few evenings I read, my cadence was tentative, as if it belied my lack of faith. But I'd watch him as I read the unfamiliar passages from the parchment, and he'd stare at me intently the whole while. This was all the solace I could provide, I realized.

I sat up straighter and read more slowly, enunciating the words and phrases that were most relevant to his experience of being crippled, diminished and at the mercy of others. Afraid. Alone.

He never tired of hearing the Psalms, and I gladly obliged. I sat forward on the edge of my chair when I read this to him one on one of my last nights in that house:

Psalm 3

A psalm of David. When he fled from his son Absalom.

1 O LORD, how many are my foes!
How many rise up against me!

2 Many are saying of me,
"God will not deliver him."

3 But you are a shield around me, O LORD;
you bestow glory on me and lift [b] up my head.

4 To the LORD I cry aloud,
and he answers me from his holy hill.

5 I lie down and sleep;
I wake again, because the LORD sustains me.

6 I will not fear the tens of thousands
drawn up against me on every side.

7 Arise, O LORD!
Deliver me, O my God!
Strike all my enemies on the jaw;
break the teeth of the wicked.

8 From the LORD comes deliverance.
May your blessing be on your people.

I leaned over his bed to say goodnight, and he reached out for me. I bent low so I could better hear him as he struggled to twist his mouth into the right shape to make sounds that would carry his meaning. First, a few whispers, then some sputtering and hissing. Just when I thought he was about to give up in frustration, he said, clear as a bell:

"Thank you." And then he smiled and closed his eyes.

I patted his arm and turned out the light.