Elisa visited her mother in the nursing home every single day. Joan had lost her ability to speak, she was confused and did not always recognize her family members. Joan spent only three months in the nursing home. She showed no signs of illness, of her body shutting down. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2015, Joan’s heart miraculously stopped beating. What made her passing so timely was that Joan had devoted her life in service to others and had played an active role in the Civil Rights Movement. She and her husband Dominick had gone to the March on Washington, and Dominick had been a bus captain. Joan’s death was nothing short of triumphant. It was as though she willed herself to die on this historic day, fighting for justice as she always had. It makes one pause and wonder about how much of a hand we have in our own deaths. A lot of this is beyond our control, but Joan is a reminder that we have some wiggle-room in when we cross-over into the next world. Elisa asked me to give the eulogy at Joan’s funeral. I was both honored and intimidated. I tried to channel Joan’s energy; this was a difficult task, as Joan was an avid reader and used to write poetry on little slips of paper that she left around the house. Joan’s favorite flower was the sunflower. These long stalks of bright yellow covered her coffin that day. Written below is her eulogy. I think Joan must have helped me with it. It was her way in life and in death to assist the souls around her. “Several years ago, Joan Guidice went to a physical therapy clinic in New Jersey. I overheard two women talking in the waiting room with New York accents, (everyone surrounding them was charmed by their chatter), as I scanned Joan’s medical chart for why she needed therapy. It was not until I entered a private treatment room that I saw a woman with tousled grey hair, propped up eagerly to meet me, her daughter laughing by her side. Joan had seemed old and sick from her medical history, but in person, she burst open like a sunflower. During the following weeks, Joan told the entire physical therapy staff of her years in theater as a young woman. She had not only been on many top radio shows, but Joan had held a leading role in the play “Riders By the Sea” in 1956. Joan Ferguson, which was her maiden name, had once been walking the streets of Greenwich Village with some acting friends, when one of them knocked on the apartment door of none other than Marlon Brando. Rather than being star-struck by meeting Mr. Brando, Joan turned her head away and blushed when he answered the door in nothing but his briefs. The young male exercise assistants in the physical therapy clinic were so drawn to Joan’s theatrical magnetism and her maternal concern for others, that they began to call her “Mama Joan”. The name stuck. It was not until a year or so later that I walked down the steps of Elisa’s mother-daughter home to discover more of Joan. This enigmatic star of the stage was someone more complicated than she had first appeared. Joan was a woman of conviction. She saw the bigger picture in life and the weight of the world seemed to sit heavily on her shoulders. Joan worried about the plight of the poor. About racism. She worried about war and everything she heard on the news. Yet when Joan spoke of her family, her anxiety about life disappeared. Joan loved her two “Dominicks” so dearly. While she missed her late husband, she was so very proud of her son Dominick Jr, who had earned his MBA and married his love Susie, who would bear the four grand-children that Joan spoke of with reverence. Tory seemed to take after Joan, in her concern for the well-being of others. Ava was the outgoing curious and mercurial child. And the twins! What a blessing it was to greet these tiny souls who were born prematurely, but would grow hearty and robust to overcome their little statures. Indeed, it was family that saved Joan from her worries. When she married her husband Dominick, she painstakingly learned to cook the recipes of his mother, Josephine. While this large Italian brood had been overwhelming to Joan at first, they had become a great source of comfort to her through the years. Italians had a way of raising their voices at one another over meals that was not out of anger, Joan said. They loved each other so fiercely, it was as if their love could be amplified through a microphone. This family of her husband gave unending support, just as Joan’s daughter Elisa took every measure to ensure her mother’s happiness, even when Joan could no longer remember why it was that she worried about everyone else. In sum, Joan had become Italian…for in no other culture was loyalty to blood and relatives held in such high esteem as she had witnessed before.
It is not easy to live in a world without Joan Ferguson Guidice. Nor is it easy to capture a woman who was so many things: mother, friend, Civil Rights activist, poet, intellectual, wife and actress. Joan became Italian, in the effusive way that she loved and protected others. She became Italian by her proximity to this Mediterranean culture, steeped in togetherness and solidarity. May we then remember Joan in the words of the Italian poet Eugenio Montale, who wrote in the 19th century: ‘Bring me then the plant that points to the bright lucidity swirling up from the Earth, and life exhaling that central breath! Bring me the sunflower, crazed with the love of light!’ May Mama Joan be joined in the yellow wash of the fields which promise her homecoming at last.
As the world prepares for the lighting of the first Hanukkah candle, I am reminded of one of my fondest relationships. I once had a Jewish husband. We were married for roughly three years. His name was Benny and he was very old. I met Benny when he was 92. At that time, I was in my late thirties. Benny had panache. At age 92, he made advances towards every single woman in the nursing home. Most of them turned away from him in disgust. But there was something about this man that appealed to me. He was undaunted by rejection. His flair in speaking and hand gesticulations were evidence of a man who had really been somebody before dementia had set in. “Darling, you are so beautiful,” Benny declared to every woman who crossed his path. “Do you want to marry me?" Each morning, Benny sat in the foyer of the nursing home, right at the entry. When our relationship first heated up, this guy read The New York Times. By the end, he could not read or follow what was happening on the news. That never really mattered to me. What mattered was Benny’s interest in people. He loved socializing, he loved politics. I wondered how he had come to be this ebullient person. I learned about Benny’s past by talking to his children and other residents of the nursing home. Benny was conceived in Siberia, in the year 1919. His mother’s name was Rachel. This pregnancy of Rachel’s fell at the same time in Russia when Jewish people were being murdered by the Bolsheviks in pograms. Rachel discovered that she was pregnant with her first child and fled across the continent. She gave birth to Benny in a snowy field, and a local farmgirl came to assist her in the delivery. Through a series of miraculous events, Rachel, her husband and their son Benny traveled through Eastern Europe and wound up on a boat headed to the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Benny had no more than a sixth-grade education. While I never knew Benny’s father’s name, I learned that he had a respiratory disorder. So, what did Benny do, as a Russian 12-year old immigrant child? He worked in a factory to support his parents and his younger siblings.
But again, how did I come to be wed to this old man, you may be wondering? Benny liked that I had a Jewish name. He began writing love letters on paper towels and left them near my computer desk. He started to tell all the staff and residents that I was going to become his wife. My coworkers rolled their eyes. His fellow residents scoffed at him. The more the others found our companionship to be ridiculous, the more I returned Benny’s affections. I took to greeting him with relish and never denied his marriage proposals. A few months later, Benny sat with The New York Timeswrapped on his lap in his wheelchair in the foyer of the nursing home. He asked why his wife was late for work (even in his confusion he had figured out that I am a late sleeper), and the staff began to play along with the delusion of our marriage. The cooking staff asked me to watch my husband eat, to ensure he was getting enough nutrition. The nurse’s aides asked me if I could help to pick out Benny’s clothes, because he refused to wear anything without his wife’s approval. The hairdresser implored, “Can you please bring your husband to the beauty salon today? He needs a haircut and will not listen to me.” Through the three years of this delusional relationship, I tried to uncover all that I could about Benny. I spoke with his son Jeffrey, a broad-shouldered and bearded ex-hippie. Jeffrey visited the nursing home quite a bit. He was the person who explained Benny’s Jewish faith. “My Dad was involved in the Massah and Aliyah movements in the late 1940’s. These were the revolutionary groups who helped to found Zionism. My father stood on the corners of Greenwich Village and shouted to anyone who would listen about the necessity of the State of Israel for the Jews after World War II. He was a fiercely political man.” I was spellbound. Jeffrey showed me pictures of his father Benny and his mother Sylvia meeting dignitaries by the Dead Sea in the late 1960’s. They had been tucked away in Benny’s sock drawer. “My father always wanted to move to Israel, but my mother forbade it,” Jeffrey told me. “I think that always tore at my Dad. His soul was living in Jerusalem, but the rest of his body was forced to live in Brooklyn, New York.” As Jeffrey and I spoke of these things, Benny ate egg drop soup (his favorite), and gazed at the two of us adoringly. My husband would stop and ask his son, “Do you think I should marry Rebecca?” Jeffrey always replied, “Yes, Dad. I think Mom would approve of this girl for you.” I guess you could say that our marriage was ephemeral. It felt like a dream. An odd dream, as Benny would show up at the rehab gym each morning and ask where his wife was. My coworkers would tell him that his wife began working at 10:30 and that I would show up later. Benny became an everyday presence in my working life, and I knelt to hug and kiss him in his wheelchair each morning. Much as one would a spouse. Benny’s son Jeffrey had a daughter who was getting married. It was important to Jeffrey that Benny attended his grand-daughter’s wedding. But Jeffrey also knew that Benny did little without me. I was invited to a large and beautiful event in August with Benny as my date. I had gotten a spray-tan and a fancy updo so that I looked as elegant as Benny in his suit. As we entered the venue, and I pushed him in his wheelchair, I was not blind to all the snickering and nudging of the other wedding attendants. While I cut up Benny’s steak that evening, it was clear what everybody was thinking. They believed I was some sort of Anna Nicole Smith, who was after Benny’s money. The truth was that Benny had no money. Jeffrey had filed a Medicaid application for his father years ago. Benny had a great time that night, however. He danced in his wheelchair to the Hava Nagila. He became confused at times and asked where we were. I simply reached for his hand and he resumed smiling and laughing.
There were afternoons when he would be sitting in the Day Room and suddenly place his forehead on the table in front of him. Benny could be heard shouting: “I am dying! Someone please help me! I cannot even pick my head up off this table! Please help me!” Ten minutes later, Benny would promptly sit up and wheel himself back to his bedroom. (These were the moments when I giggled uncontrollably; I wept with laughter and tears of mirth fell down my cheeks. Benny’s theatrical flair and determination to get the attention he deserved were what I loved most about him. Yet all the while, I knew what was coming. Benny would leave us soon).
When the last few weeks of his death were approaching, Benny no longer wheeled himself around. He no longer looked for his wife. Instead, I sat next to him and held his hand. For a short man, he had enormous hands. He looked up at me and said, “I love you, Rebecca-la. I am so glad we got married.” Benny kept lingering. His family began to take vigil in Benny’s room and I was reluctant to go inside. While his family was grateful for the succor I had given their father and grandfather in his later years, it was most embarrassing when Benny’s eyes flew open when I entered the room and he stated, “Here she is! I love her!” I stayed away from that entire hallway of the nursing home during those days. Each night I went home and wondered why Benny was still alive. What was he hanging on for, exactly? But he kept on living, and his children and grandchildren sat around him in a watchful throng. It was not until February 29th, leap year day, the day that only happens every four years, when Benny drew his last breath. It was true that everything about Benny’s life was remarkable. He had been born under great peril in a snowy field in Siberia. He had fought without tiring for the establishment of Israel as a haven for Jewish people after the war. Benny was a man who had controlled his environment as best as he could. Despite the many obstacles in his path, Benny had great willpower. He had worked since the sixth grade to support his family of origin, he had opened a dry-cleaning business in adulthood to ensure the well-being of his wife and kids, and he had traveled to Israel several times to see the land he had helped to secure for his fellow Jewish people. In his last years, Benny wed a much younger woman. While most people dwindle and weaken like brown flowers without water in a nursing home, Benny had thrived. I went to Benny’s funeral. I heard his son Jeffrey speak about Benny’s views on religion: “Man created God, not the other way around.” Benny had not been a believer in the spiritual aspect of Judaism, even though he went to Temple and celebrated all the Jewish holidays. No, Benny was a believer in fighting for his heritage. He fought for his roots in Russia, when Bolsheviks were attempting to kill his people. He fought for Israel, for Zionism. There were many days when I drove home from working in that nursing home and I felt more secure about the world. This was because of Benny. Benny did not espouse the idea of miracles or God’s direction for our lives. Rather, he believed in the individual’s ability to alter the world through his or her own will, intellect, politics, actions and fighting for the good. It seemed to be no mistake that Benny willed his own death on the most remarkable day on the calendar, February 29th. I know that Benny decided on the moment of his own death. His son Jeffrey knew it also. I was thrilled to see Jeffrey a few weeks after Benny’s death, when he dropped off sandwiches for the staff in thanks for all they had done. “Just so you know, everyone knows it was you who kept my father alive for the last three years. You did a great job as his wife. You also made one hell of a step-mother…" I believe that I was a good wife to Benny, in our bizarre and complicated romance. But I do not think that I kept Benny alive for as long as he lived. If anything, I believe the opposite to be true. I was working in one of the hardest environments possible. I wept frequently, could not sleep many nights and felt purposeless in performing my job duties at the nursing home. It had been this short Jewish guy who greeted me at the sliding glass doors each morning who helped me to keep living. He showed me that we cannot always look for miracles; we must look for ways where we can summon the strength in our souls to create a world that we want to see, for ourselves and those that we love. I will light a candle for Hanukkah this year. I will light it for my Jewish husband, even though he would find that unnecessary. Maybe I should get one of those old-fashioned matchboxes, the kind with the very sturdy sticks. Yes, I will quickly strike the colored tip of the wooden match along the phosphorus surface of the box and watch the flame suddenly come to life. I will listen for the electrical crackle that happens in that instant. I won’t await a miracle. Instead, I will act and fight and choose my life and my (hopefully distant) death as well as I possibly can. Just as my Jewish husband did. Some things in life are easy to describe. I have a friend named Jessie. We have worked together for years. At first, it was at a physical therapy clinic in New Jersey. Jessie ran the front desk and made sure that the scheduling and insurance authorization ran smoothly. I later convinced Jessie to apply for a job in the nursing home wherein I worked. The nursing home was a slipshod organization; I was not sure if Jessie wanted this job, but I felt that I needed her. The nursing home needed her more. When Jessie accepted this position, everything changed in that place. Jessie’s job description was to coordinate the care of the elderly for their rehabilitation needs. Not only did Jessie perform these requisite duties, she also adored the residents of the nursing home. When dropping off printed information to each of the four nursing stations at this place, she was found helping residents getting dressed, she lifted them on and off toilets, and she pushed patients in their wheelchairs to her desk and talked to them while she did her computer work. These qualities in a person like Jessie are easy to write about.
This day was somewhat different from the other days that we worked at the nursing home. This day is harder to describe. The patients had awakened earlier, even the ones with dementia. It was as though they knew that something unusual was happening. The nurses were taking extra time with dressing and grooming the residents. By 9 am that morning, the residents had a look of thrilled anticipation, as they sat in circles in their wheelchairs.
It was around that time, in late morning, that droves of families entered the building. Jessie and I had never witnessed this before. People pulled up in SUV’s and carried trays of turkey, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pies, yam casseroles and they set up their Thanksgiving meals in the Dining Hall of the nursing home. As a staff, we had never before seen such attention paid to the residents. Jessie is an avid football fan, but primarily of the New York Giants. She rushed around to each of the four wings of the nursing home and ensured that football was on every television. We brought the patients to the rehab gym and blasted Chubby Checker, while they walked and exercised and their families watched in awe. Jessie and I ate a Thanksgiving meal made by the cooking staff, after we were finished taking care of everyone. That was year one of our Thanksgiving tradition. Jessie and I worked together on this day for the next two years. We grew to look forward to it. There were great-grandmothers who held infant relatives for the first time. Toddlers wandered down hallways and banged into wheelchairs, they were picked up and consoled. Middle-aged men shouted against referee calls in football. The cooking staff of the nursing home took great pride in their green bean casserole recipe. Families offered their food to other residents and brought the food to their tables (for residents who had no family at all to visit). This next part of this story is even more difficult to describe. It was after our third Thanksgiving together that Jessie was involved in a motor vehicle accident. One of the vertebrae in her neck was shattered. Thereafter, everyone in the nursing home asked how she was doing. I never answered them, because I did not know how she was doing. Nobody knew. Not even the doctors. Jessie had become paralyzed and could no longer walk. She needs a wheelchair to get around now. Jessie also needs a caregiver to address her physical needs. This came as a shock, as this is the same woman who helped others to address theirs. Jessie used to help diaper people. This was never her job. But she did it anyway, because she has a fiery heart and refuses to allow others to ask for help. She just gives it, without question. Jessie lives a few hours away in Pennsylvania. I think about the losses that we have sustained. We have lost most of the elderly patients we cared for. Jessie has lost her ability to walk. It seems all too easy to fixate on these very hard realities. And these things are quite real; they cannot be reversed. Just as the old people in nursing homes without families cannot be soothed by some green bean casserole made by the staff. But here is the thing that sustains the holiday of Thanksgiving: there are families who welcome the ones without families to their tables. The clamor of the preparation and dressing of the elderly in their finest clothing for this holiday is important. When Jessie changed the channel of the televisions so that our patients could watch football, she changed everything. Jessie created a holiday, in a place known for a lack of celebration. I will be with my family this Thanksgiving, and Jessie will be with hers. I miss my nursing home Thanksgivings with Jessie. I miss the woman who made a festival out of nothing at all. When I smell turkey, I remember Jessie hurrying around to push patients in their wheelchairs, so that they could find a piece of joy. Jessie made everyone feel like family. While the New York Giants may not be doing their best lately, I thank the Master of the Universe for football, for crying toddlers who crash into wheelchairs, for the very old people who teach us everything we need to know, and for the Jessies of the world. |
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