There's a lot of negativity floating around these days. I fall prey to it. I also contribute to it. So to be able to share a 100% positive story of how an old friend and hospice workers made a Salem woman's last days before she died as comfortable as possible -- that's a pleasure.
Jim Ramsey is the friend. I've known him since the early 1970s. When he was part of Ramsey Real Estate, Jim was the realtor who found a house for my wife and me in 1977, enabling us to move from Portland to Salem when I got a job with state government.
For quite a while, more years than I can recall, Jim and I have gotten together every Sunday for coffee and conversation. Part of that time, Jim's mother, Virginia (Ginger) Hager -- she got remarried after Jim's father died -- would join us at the West Salem Starbucks.
Last Wednesday Ginger died at the age of 97. She suffered from severe dementia.
That led Jim to stop sleeping in his apartment and move into his mother's West Salem home in May of 2023, about a year ago. Every week, with a few exceptions, Jim was able to continue to meet with me at the Urban Grange coffeehouse where I'd always ask, "How are things going with your mother?"
The answer always made me think, Wow, Jim is displaying such love and devotion. Because caring for anyone who is elderly with a serious health problem is difficult. When the person has dementia, which steadily worsened as the months passed, caring for them is hugely more difficult.
I won't attempt to describe the specific problems Jim had to deal with.
All I can say is that hearing his stories of what he had to do in caring for his mother brought to mind "saintly" and "selfless." These certainly aren't qualities that I feel I possess, but I felt inspired to be a more compassionate person after each of our coffee shop conversations.
Basically, it's difficult to care for someone over a long period of time who is mentally normal but needs help with many activities of daily living: eating, getting into and out of bed, going to the bathroom, all that stuff. In Ginger's case, not only did Jim have to help with these things, he wasn't able to get much assistance from his mother. In fact, she often opposed him. And naturally Ginger wasn't capable of expressing any real appreciation for everything Jim was doing.
Jim had support, thankfully. A caregiver who was a friend of the family was hired to come to Ginger's house for four hours almost every day, giving Jim time off to handle things at his apartment and do necessary errands like grocery shopping and coffee-house-conversation-time. She was viewed as a "grandma sitter." Jim's brother and sister-in-law lived nearby and helped out also.
But Jim was the primary support for his mother. As the months passed, I began to ask if he and his family had considered having Ginger enter a memory care home or institution.
They had, but Ginger was becoming increasingly argumentative as her dementia progressed. It was clear that she wouldn't want to leave her home, and there was no power of attorney for medical care decisions -- nor, obviously, any ability to have one signed by Ginger, given her dementia. So a court order would have been needed to admit her to an institution.
Jim was stressed, but he persevered. Again, I found this astoundingly admirable. I'd keep telling him, "You are accumulating so much good karma for what you're doing, you should be reborn in wonderful circumstances." And I don't even believe in karma, or reincarnation.
In January 2024, Jim and his family had Ginger admitted to a hospice services provider, Serenity Hospice. Great decision. This resulted in a caregiver coming two days a week for an hour each time to check blood pressure, oxygen level, temperature, and such. The hospice also provided expert advice about how to handle Ginger's declining condition, such as her reluctance to eat.
I was much impressed with how the hospice caregivers anticipated the needs of Jim and his mother in Ginger's last days, when a caregiver came every day during the week or so before she died. Jim told me that on Monday, I think it was, several days before his mother's death, a hospice worker contacted him and said that she'd be spending the night at Ginger's house for a few days so Jim could get some much-needed sleep.
(His mother was needing almost continuous care and attention, including at night.)
Then, on Wednesday, a hospice caregiver arrived at the house at 10 am to give Ginger a bath in bed, including washing her hair, following a rough night where Jim's mother was having breathing problems that sounded like a "death rattle."
That allowed Jim to leave the house and attend to some errands. When he returned, Jim learned that his mother had died.
Death of a parent, or anybody, is sad for loved ones. However, given Ginger's condition and her being 97 (a few months from being 98), the sadness was mixed with relief that Ginger's suffering was over -- and that she had died relatively easily at home, after being bathed and cared for by a hospice worker.
I've never heard anything but positive stories about hospice services. This is rare in health care, where gripes abound. Serenity Hospice was a great aid to Jim and his family, along with his mother, of course. I salute everyone who works for a hospice. It must be a difficult job, though a rewarding one.
For as the oft-heard saying goes, it isn't death that scares most people, it's the dying that precedes death. Hospices help to relieve that fear.
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