It's Me Friday!

Finished up about an hour ago at  the mattress store for the week. It wasn't  as busy  as yesterday but made a few sales and made a few contacts who I think will be back.  My last sale was to a tiny lady who walked with a cane. She bought a twin mattress for a day bed she bought on Overstock.com. She was all worried about how to get  it home and wanted to know who was there to load it? I told her she was looking at  the Loader! She said she drove a SUV and asked if it would fit inside? "Heck yeah!" was my instant enthusiastic reply.

So she drove home with her driver's seat pulled up so far she could have steered with her boobs and the mattress was smack up next to her so she had to lean towards the door while she drove but off she went!

My sister and I are going to visit my Diddy's cousin, Frances tomorrow who is in a hospice in Griffin about twenty miles away.

She's a firecracker... at least she was before her kidney failure which landed her in hospice. We didn't meet her until my Diddy  met her about fifteen years ago and she came to a family reunion at my sister's house. She was mentally sharp as a tack. Very computer savvy, paid all her bills online and always contributed to our family website. She was deaf as a post and you had to holler at her to be heard but she had a great sense of humor and we all fell in love with her. After my Diddy died we stayed in touch with her. She lived by herself in a tidy  tiny house off a state highway right down the road from  the cemetery where my parents and grandparents are buried.

A few years ago some idiot doctor botched a catheter and she had to go to rehab for an open wound the size of a postcard on her leg . All her immediate family lives out of state so my sister, Massey, Zach and I went to visit her several times a week during her six week stay. She was always upbeat and never, ever complained. The rehab facility was also a nursing home so it was pretty  depressing to walk in and see people on gurneys in the hallways looking lonely. The more mobile old peeps shuffled about the place on their walkers with  tennis balls attached to  the front legs or in  wheelchairs propelling themselves along with their socked feet. Franny owned a cell phone but you  couldn't call her on it because she couldn't hear you. Massey left for band camp and offered to let Franny use her lap top so she could communicate with family via email, check her bank statements, read the family website and read my "Blob."  You could tell her ten times it was a BLOG but every time she said it, it came out "Blob."

I took the lap top to her on a visit and showed her how to use it. The place boasted  "WiFi" friendly areas but they weren't. The only place we could connect was in the front lobby so we would wheel Franny up to the front lobby and let her do her thing while we watched the other old peeps gaze at her in wonder as they either wheeled or shuffled by  on their walkers.

The next time I went to visit was with Zach in tow. It was a Sunday and we had to wait for her to get out of the church service. It was a glass enclosed room and as we waited outside noticed most all their chins were on their chests. I looked over at  Zach and said "I don't think  they're ALL praying." While we waited a woman beside us mentioned she was waiting on a patient. She was a physical therapist at  the facility. I mentioned that we needed another roll across the bed  table like they had their food served on for my aunt to put her lap top.

The woman looked around her on both sides and said "Well I tell my patients when they come in here, not to bring  their valuables, don't bring  your rings, watches or don't even bring your teeth. Things have a way of walking off. I 'm not saying it's employees but maybe some random visitor walking down the hall seeing something valuable unattended in a room and simply walking off with it."
Well  that freaked me out. Massey's lap top wasn't even totally paid for yet.

The next  day I visited, came in with a hard plastic tool box large enough  to hold the computer with  the shelving taken out,  a bicycle chain to chain the tool box to the bed and a padlock to lock the box. I had the forethought to type up a letter for Frances to read explaining why we needed to lock up Massey's computer when she wasn't in her room. It seemed better than going into her room and having to scream at her "There are thieves around here!"

She looked at me funny when I walked in with all my gear but two of her friends from church were there to visit so I explained it all to them. Then handed Frances the letter to read I had written. She read  the letter with her mouth silently moving as she read the words.  She got to one part of the letter, looked up at her friends with squinty eyes and hollered to them "THEY SAY DON'T EVEN BRING YOUR TEETH TO THIS PLACE!" I held both my hands out palm side down waving frantically up and down to keep her quiet. It didn't work.

Classic Frances moment.

Frances' outlook doesn't look good. She's refused Dialysis. She also had open heart surgery a couple of years back and think she's just tired of being cut open, poked at, worked on and having to be in the hospital.

I told my sister tonight on the phone after firming up plans for tomorrow's visit that if Frances does pass, I am asking her nieces and nephew (all out of state) if Cindy and I can speak at her funeral.  I don't want her funeral to be a sad depressing affair and they better not play Amazing Grace. Don't depress us, lift us up! The Battle Hymn of the Republic would be a much better choice. My sister says she wants that at her funeral and after listening once again to the words I totally agree. I want it to be filled with fantastic funny Franny moments! I want it to be a tribute to what a feisty, gutsy and determined woman she was.

My sister has the most hysterical story  about picking Frances up from the Atlanta airport when she came home from an out of town family reunion. I reminded my sister of it tonight and we both started laughing just talking about it.

That's the way Frances should be remembered when her time comes, with a smile.

Til next  time...COTTON