March 9, 2008 – Helen and Warren talk often these days about “the new state of normal.” We all joke about this new state. The only normal is the absence of normality. When I met this gracious couple, who had just entered the Washington County Hospice and Palliative Care Program, they told me that they wanted nothing to change in their lives.
  A few weeks later, a lot has changed. Helen’s sofa has been replaced by a hospital bed, the couple is undertaking a sweeping, brave and difficult reorganization of their lives – new washer and dryer, clearing out  furniture and old papers, rearranging the kitchen, trying to find Warren a reclining medical chair so he can remain right next to Helen day and night, more daily health care and housekeeping help, different medications to make Helen more comfortable, rearranging all of the downstairs furniture, storing supplies and food more efficiently, more proteins and other nourishments for Helen’s diet. And two dogs, Izzy and Lenore, who have become regulars in the household.
  As often happens, Izzy permits Helen to open up in ways that are difficult sometimes with humans. Lenore makes everyone smile and laught. Powerful one-two punch.
  I asked Helen yesterday what her worst fear was. She told me it was playing shuffleboard in Florida. “Hellish,” she said, “it’s hellish just to think about it.” I told her she was in little danger of finding herself playing shuffleboard in Florida. I always ask Helen what kind of trouble she has gotten into. “Not much,” she says,”can’t really make too much trouble in a hospital bed.” She said she wants very much to sit with Izzy in her garden when it gets warmer. We will do that, I told her.
  I’ve learned much from watching the Hospice social workers and nurses and staff work with Helen and Warren. Move in baby steps, they say. Let people set their own goals and adapt. We are there to help them meet their goals, not ours. This, I see, has been very true with this proud couple. Two people who never accepted help from anyone, and are coming to terms with needing so much. They have to get there in their own time. The Hospice workers take great pains not to force anyone into anything, but are right there when they are ready.
  Three weeks ago, Helen told me she didn’t need anyone to read to her. But I pointed out she wasn’t making much progress on her books, and she conceded that she didn’t have the energy to read by herself sometimes, and had trouble seeing. So we began reading to her, and I’ve been reading Yeats, Sandburg, Frost, Dickinson and Chesterton. We have a big list of favorite poems now.
    I get the sense Warren is a bit more settled with the way things are, and is grateful for the Hospice assistance. I also get the sense he is tired, struggling to manage so much and keep Helen’s spirits up.
  “Every day,” he says, “we find things to laugh at. Including ourselves.”
  Warren says he is working hard to find some equilibrium, but is slowly coming to the realization that there may not really be any equilibrium now, just adjusting daily to the new reality. “The real world is the real world,” he says. We are all meeting later this week to figure out how to get a medical recliner into the living room, where there is not much room, an elemental task in the new state of normal.