Connie’s family was deeply grateful for Red’s work with Connie.
Above, he met Connie’s son Mitchell for the first time. Mitchell was one of Connie’s strongest advocates, he helped to make certain she died the way she wanted to die.
He and I have talked several times, he is a warm and compassionate human being. It was good to meet him, it seemed as if we had known each other for a long time.
I will always be grateful to Karen Thompson for bringing Red into my life. She appreciated his sensitivity to people and her wish was for him to do therapy work. I will always be faithful to that promise.
We went to a funeral home in Watervliet, N.Y. last night to join Connie’s family at an evening service there. Her best friend was there, also her family and Father Ed, the Catholic priest who conducted the service.
It was a simple, short service, Connie was laid out in a coffin for viewing. A the end of the service, I went up to the casket to say goodbye. It was strange for me to see Connie, she looked so different from the Connie I knew.
Red was remarkable, I think he personally greeted each of the score of people at the service. He was quiet and gentle, he is a brilliant therapy dog.
I learned a lot about Connie, she was a hunter, I discovered, and had a long history of caring for people. I was interested to see some of the family photos up on the funeral hoe wall, Connie loved her family very much.
I read some excerpts from my writing on the blog, talked briefly to Mitch, who I have come to know a bit in the past few days.
Red seemed eager to comfort everyone in the room, and I think he did a lot of good there.
Almost everyone in the room knelt down to hug him and pet him. It is astonishing to me still to see Red enter a room, size it up and find the people who want to see him, and ignore the people who don’t.
Red lay down next to one of Connie’s sons as I spoke, and came with me to look in the casket. I don’t know what he knew or saw as we approached the gasket, he gave no signs of recognition.
It was curious for me to be behind a podium that wasn’t a reading in a hall or bookstore. Maria joked that she thought I might be confused because there was no applause.
I didn’t expect that but almost asked if there were any questions, and then caught myself. There are times to be interactive, and times not to be.
Maria came with me, and I am so glad we met the family. I talked about my work with Connie, and her love for Red and Maria. I think I am spent a bit since Connie died, it was surprisingly emotional to me.
Maria was in tears at the service, Red was loving to everyone, and subdued also. He did pick up some of the vibes in the room for sure.
And tomorrow, even more so, the Mansion is holding its memorial service for Connie, and I think it will be very tough on the residents. Connie was much-loved and respected there. I’m going to speak again at the Mansion at the morning memorial.
I have a few more thoughts about Connie to share, and I will do that here on the blog. But tomorrow begins my moving forward. There are lots of people there to talk to and visit, and ask my favorite question, “what can I do for you? What do you need?”
I knew as we got close to Connie that her loss would be emotional and felt more deeply than I have permitted myself to feel in the past. I learned in hospice that the way to be effective is to listen and observe and to stand back.
One of Connie’s relatives took me aside and told me she was sure I had to do some grieving. This had not occurred to me, I am not the ones who have experienced the loss, I could see the grief in their faces.
But I guess I have some processing to do.
And some good work.
I’m not going to get much good done giving speeches.
For my money, Maria’s beautiful yarn is a great stocking-stuffer or holiday gift. But make up your own mind. We had a chilly but fun video-session today with the sheep themselves, and a supporting cast of Gus, Red, Fate, Lulu and Fanny.
And of course, Maria, talking lovingly about her sheep and her wool and her yarn.
In the video, Gus licked Lulu on the nose, jumped on her head.
Fate did nothing with enormous enthusiasm, and Red kept everything under control, as usual.
The wool costs $25 a skein plus shipping and there are only a few skeins left. There are also four bumps of roving for $25 each plus shipping. (Earlier, I said the roving was $32, that was an error.)
This is a classic Bedlam Farm/Maria video, come and see for yourself.
For more details, you can read Maria’s blog or e-mail her: [email protected]
As the dark days approach, I am eager in my photography to photograph and present the days of color and light, I am offering this photo for sale for $130, printed on rag paper and signed. It is 8 1/2″ by 12.5″. If you think you will need some color and light over the next months, this might be a good idea to consider, perhaps for Christmas. Contact Maria – [email protected].
Connie Martell was a powerful woman, her son Mitchell called her a “spitfire,” and that was true.
Whenever I asked Connie what I could do for her, she suggested someone else for me to do something for. This one wasn’t feeling good and could use a visit from Red, that one was a reader who had no books, this one could use a sweatshirt or a jacket for her walks outside.
Every time I visited, she tried to tell me what I could and couldn’t write, and I kept telling her I would write what I wished. It wasn’t really an argument with her, but a way we had of communicating. Maria would sit down and the two would yak until somebody broke it up.
Connie and I had our own way of talking. She told everyone she knew how grateful she was for me and Red and the Army Of Good, but she would never tell me and I would have squirmed if she did.
I had this firm rule for my therapy work – I only visited people inside of the institutions where they were it was not a good idea for me to visit nursing homes and hospitals, I had my own work to do and that would fill up my idea and turn my work into an endless round of driving, it would turn me from a volunteer into a social worker.
I didn’t want that, I was a writer, and a busy one, I didn’t want to diminish my own work, and I was aware of the emotional pitfalls of trying to be Mother Teresa. That was not me, or who I wished to be.
Connie seemed to break all of my rules and upend all of my boundaries. We were very different, she and I, but also similar. We had the same dry sense of humor, the same emotional awkwardness, we were both a lot softer and mushier than we like to let on.
But I had not met anyone like Connie before.
She had no real independence but was fiercely independent. She was in great need of help, but never asked for help, or really got comfortable with it. She seemed gruff and blunt, but had a huge heart and sensitive soul. Although she could barely get up out of her chair, she was quite aware of the world, and reached far beyond her own small space. She insisted on her rights, but had fewer rights every day.
A former nurse who had worked all of her life, she was very conscious of the work of the Mansion staff, and appreciative of it, and they loved her back for that. A person in constant paint, she never complained about it. A knitter who claimed she didn’t know much about knitting, she cranked out countless gifts for the people in her universe, and many beyond.
An elderly person nearly crippled with arthritis and bone problems, she made all kinds of things for months.
I rarely attended funeral services for the people Izzy or Lenore or Red and I saw. I didn’t have to time for it, and I didn’t want to keep draining myself in that way. I wanted to focus on what I could do well and I didn’t wish to burn out.
And I worried about the dogs. Of all the things my therapy dogs and I have done, funerals are the most confusing and difficult things for them. They are not sure what to do, or what the work is, or where their people are, yet they always seem to sense the presence of the people they knew. Izzy used to lie next to the caskets of the hospice patients we had visited. Lenore was utterly confused.
Red, an exquisitely sensitive dog, went to one funeral and went right to the grieving family and sat with them. He soaks up sadness and loss, he is wired into the souls of people.
Tonight Maria and Red and I are all going to a memorial service in Connie’s hometown, an hour away. I am not grieving over Connie, I am grateful to be able to talk about her, she deserves to be remembered.
I am not sad because Connie is precisely where she wanted to be. As she told me more than once, “I’ve had my turn, now it’s time to give somebody else a turn.”
And that was not just chatter. She believed it, she said again and again that she was ready to go when God called for her, and that was that. There was no wailing, brooding or deep reflection. She hated drama as much as I do. She lived minute-by-minute, but saw the future clearly.
When it was time, it was time. There was nothing much more to say.
Tomorrow, I am also speaking at another memorial service for Connie, the one at the Mansion in the morning. I think that will be a hard one for the residents, Red will be busy. He is very good at comforting and consoling. Me, not so much.
I feel it is important for me to write about my time with Connie – in another world, it would have made a great book. I don’t want to forget her and she deserves to be remembered.
I am grateful to be at both services, it is where I belong this time, and very happy to speak about what Connie meant to us and to so many others. The Army Of Good came through for here time after time.
There are lots of remarkable people at the Mansion that I have come to know and love. Tomorrow, time to move on and get back within the boundaries that have worked so well for me this far.
Connie was a boundary breaker, in death as in love. She was a powerful symbol of the drama of aging. As her body began to wither, her soul just seemed to get bigger.
