Edited to add: this is really a post for my girls, so that in the future, when they see pictures, or ask about her, or get a sense of someone they loved missing in their lives, I can use this to help remind them of their time with J. I am sure there are already so many things I left out.
I saw her today, although she is not conscious. It turns out this diagnosis - pancreatic cancer - comes with about four months. So she knew all along, even though when we went to play at her house in the last couple months, she really never let on. She seemed the same as always, almost. Except when I naively asked her if they still felt they had caught things early, and she caught my eye a little bit, and shook her head slightly, and looked away. And then the girls ran in the room, and wanted her attention, and that was the end of the conversation.---
Her smiling face – that’s what I think of first when I think of J. And her constantly sunny personality.
I was sitting on the floor at the Family Resource Center. We’d been here about two months, and I could really use some help. Seven hours from the closest relative, we’d just moved an hour away from the city where our first girl was born and where I at least had other mom friends to rely on. I was meeting people in this small town, but we were all in the same boat. No help, just us.
It occurred to me – this town has a lot of retired people. Healthy, active, intelligent retired people. Wonderful grandparent-types with family that live far away, just like us. Surely we should have a matching program, where moms of young kids can get a small break, and lovely surrogate grandparents can have young kids in their lives. And I wanted to volunteer to be the first in the program.
I saw J. making her way towards me. She volunteered at the Family Resource Center – an all-around family support place, but for us a little-kids place; a community playgroup for kids two and three years old. It was my first anchor in town, my first place to go, the first place I made friends.
J. volunteered there during playgroup hours. She’d play with the kids, and help them get snack, and generally have a good time with them. She seemed retired, but young and vibrant and active.
As she happened to make her way toward me, I thought Aha! J. would know if there was anyone in town who might like to help me out.
J.? I said. Yes, K., and she gave me that big smile. Do you know anyone who would be interested in helping me with Little Big Girl sometimes? Someone who’s retired, maybe, so they could help during the day, just once in awhile or so?
Well, said J., I would. Oh! I said. I hadn’t thought of that, hadn’t thought I’d be so lucky. J. was so great with the kids, and so helpful, and already volunteering here, I hadn’t thought she’d even be available. Really? I said, That would be great!
And so we arranged that, the next Monday morning, J. would come to my house, and play with my girl. At first I offered her something for it, and she said no. So then I started buying gift certificates around town. It’s a small town, and pretty soon I was on a second-round of gift certificates to the same places. And she said, Alright. How about $5 an hour? And I said, Wow. Great.
I never did set up that matching program, other than, obviously, for myself.
From the minute J. got here, until the second she left, she was completely focused on Little Big Girl. They would play games, they would talk, she would read to her. She would tell her stories about her own life; Little Big Girl knew all about J.’s grandson and her daughter and her granddaughters and a little about her husband, D. And the cities they’d lived in, and the time J.’s car was hit, a long time ago.
They would play circus – where every stuffed animal Little Big Girl had would be out, arranged in a circle for the circus. They would play Concert, and about half the animals would be in the circle, and they and Little Big Girl and J. would play her instruments – a kazoo, a drum, a harmonica.
When J. came each Monday, Little Big Girl would jump up and down. She would be so excited before J. came that she would constantly go to the back door to see if she was here yet – starting an hour or two before her arrival. Eventually, as she got older, she would drag a chair to the back door to look out the window and check, and wait.
When she was younger and J. would walk in, as excited as she was, Little Big Girl would shriek and jump up and down and run around, and then go and hide. Sometimes she wanted J. to find her. Sometimes I think she just needed a minute to get ahold of herself before joining us again and starting all that playing.
Eventually Little Big Girl’s little sister came along, and J. took her along too. At first I thought I’d keep the baby with me, but eventually, at J.’s prodding, I realized the baby was happy with Little Big Girl and J.. When she was really little - four months, and six months, she would just sit on J.’s lap while Little Big Girl and J. played. As she got older, she would join in too.
Little Big Girl at first wanted J. to herself, and she’d say, Give the baby to mommy. Let us play! But eventually she saw that J. focused on her just as much, and eventually the baby played with them, in her own way, and it was okay.
Eventually the games Little Big Girl wanted to play evolved too. She wanted to play Princess, and Arial. She would be Sleeping Beauty, and Baby, once she could walk, would toddle over and give her a kiss, and Little Big Girl would hop up and run around and be ready to play again. Eventually Baby would go and lie down and want one of them to come and give her a kiss too, so that she could hop up and run around.
J. was always so sweet about birthdays and holidays and even the change of seasons. She would bring us these little plastic stick-on things to put on the window by the toys – an Easter bunny and eggs for Easter, Pilgrims and hats and turkeys for Thanksgiving, the sleigh and Santa after that - a little thing I had never thought to do – I’d never even noticed those stickers before – but the girls loved them.
Baby loves J. as much as Little Big Girl. When her name is mentioned, she does her full-body nod, and says, Jand Jand! Jand Jand! (The other day, because she hadn’t been here in awhile, Baby could not be placated after her name was mentioned until I gave her a picture of Jand Jand, and she carried it around clutched to her chest until naptime.) And J. had taken to calling her My Little Girl, and referring to both of them as her grandchildren, her other grandchildren.
And they love her just that much.
For a long time I would stay in the house when she was here. Not because I felt that she needed me to, but because I felt like I had so much to do. With the girls occupied, finally, finally, I could put the laundry away or pay the bills.
But J. would encourage me to leave, and get a real break. And eventually, I really was doing that consistently, and I have her to thank. I would go to Starbucks and get a coffee, and for a dollar I could read an actual daily New York Times. It was a real break, and just what I needed, and I would come back refreshed and ready to be patient, for awhile, once again. And the girls would be delirious and happy and all played out.
J. would always say, We played hard today. She played hard. They should be ready for a good nap today. And she was always right.
And she’d also take them outside and play with them in the yard. Sometimes, of late, Little Big Girl didn’t want to go out, but Baby loved to. So J. would take Baby out and put her in the swing, and have Little Big Girl stay inside, reading, right by the window where she could see her. And she’d call to her sometimes. You okay? Yeah, I’m okay.
Earlier, before Baby, J. and Little Big Girl would go on walks around the neighborhood, and J. would report back on where they went and what they did. She told me once that they used to pass an owl in a tree, the kind that is plastic and meant to scare away certain birds. J. said it’s head was bobbing, meaning going up and down, and Little Big Girl said, Then I will call it Bobby. I loved hearing these stories from J., and it was so nice to have someone else appreciate these things about my child too.
At Christmas, and Easter, and their birthdays, and even before car trips, J. would come with a little present for them, or even come early if she was going to miss the event. Always in colorful little bags, the gifts were always thoughtful, and helpful, things kids love. Stickers and bubbles, pretty napkins, suckers, crayons. A perfect little bag. And of course she’d give them books and toys. She gave Little Big Girl and Baby a wonderful book at Baby’s birth – Gossie and Gertie, where the older sister learns to sometimes follow the baby sister.
J. had five sisters, and we heard about all of them, and about her childhood, and her father, who they went to visit regularly, and of course about her own children and grandchildren who she saw regularly.
And then one day I was late getting back. Not very late, a few minutes, but I tried never to be late for J. I appreciated her so much, and this particular day she had told me she had a dentist’s appointment to get to. So I called and said, J., I am so sorry, I will be right there. (It’s a small town. I was two minutes away.)
And her voice sounded funny. And she said, K. I think you have to take me to the hospital.
And that was the beginning of the end. I called 911, and that was in March.
And now it’s May, and hospice is going to her home every day.
We still have, of course, the little red head band, with a plastic bow button she sewed on, that J. found all the parts for and surprised her with when Little Big Girl wanted to dress up like Snow White. And the little blue head band with a red bow that she made for Baby so she wouldn’t feel left out.
And the patches J. sewed on to Budgy, Little Big Girl’s most beloved blanket, that for about two of the two and a half years J. has played with my girls was Little Big Girl’s constant companion. J. was going to take Budgy again and sew her up, take her the last time she came to play, when she instead left in the ambulance, to spend five days in the hospital.
And the toy cash register she brought because Little Big Girl was wanting to play store. And the Easter stickers on the window, the last set of stickers she brought, that although Little Big Girl wants to take them down, because unpeeling them is fun, I can’t take off. And when I find them on the floor, I put them back up, even though Easter is long past.
I go tomorrow to visit J.
And I don’t know what else to say.
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