She works for housekeeping, and looks vaguely Hispanic and way younger than however old she’s about to tell me she is, and while I want to sit in my father’s room and read his Wall Street Journal, she wants to talk. She says, “Hi, Michael,” though we’ve never met and I say hi back. As she cleans she floats through the room and judging by her smile I know there is no hiding.
“Peter told me your name. It is Michael isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
“Peter’s a lovable guy. The woman who trained me twenty-seven years ago, and who has since died talked about a friend of hers she called one neat dude. And Peter is one neat dude.”
‘Who doesn’t know when to shut up.”
“And neither do I.”
“And who are you?”
“My name’s Mimi.”
“M-i-m-i?”
“Yes. Most people don’t know how to spell it.”
“They don’t remember Mimi Rogers?”
“They spell it M-e-m-e, like it sounds. Or M-e-m-i. My mother-in-law spells is M-e-m-i-e and pronounces it that way.”
“You must love that.”
“Thirty-one years now. She’ll send me a Christmas card addressed to Memie and I’ll write back Mimi but it doesn’t matter.”
“My sister spells my name M-i-c-h-e-a-l and always has. Do you work full time?”
“I do now. I used to worked full time and then went to part time to take help take care of my grandkids, but my husband got sick.”
Donna, Mack’s nurse enters and Mimi moves to the other side of the room.
“What kind of sick?” I ask.
As if it were some kind of private conversation we were having, Mimi mouths the word cancer and makes a “C” with her left hand.
When Donna leaves Mimi asks me if I understood her sign language.
It remind me of the old, old days when doctors didn’t tell patients they were dying and cancer was referred to as The Big “C.” Now everyone tells everyone everything and it feels like illness is more about preparing to die than getting better.
Mimi tells me her husband is having radiation and chemo and that he’s fifty-four and that he’s going to die. Her expression doesn’t change a bit. Light and lively to the end.
cynical
M-i-m-i
T-M-I
People visiting relatives shouldn’t have to listen to other peoples stuff. Even if you do have one neat dude for a brother.
michael
Ouch.
michael
I swear this happened, cynical.
As I was walking into the men’s room at Deaconess two women walked out of their nearby bathroom. Said one to the other, “I’ve got to find something to wipe my ass.”
Jennifer
You’re pained all over, Michael/Micheal! (See Westward. I’m hoping you only felt pained there?) It wasn’t until page 6 of googling that I got beyond Texas Massage Institute, Three Mile Island, The Monroe Institute, and so on to “too much information.”
I dunno; sometimes hearing others’ stories pulls me out of a dead-end woe-is-me space. It must be hard for her going from one thankless caregiver job to another where people have charts providing evidence that they are in great distress. She’s cheery enough that I bet if she doesn’t give relatives the information they think they have a right to dump all over her.
Ass wipe story response. (Cynical; this will probably be tmi. Stop reading now.) Did I tell you about the time I was on a field trip with my 6th grade students and went into the (two stall) bathroom to fish out a hair across my butt? (Literally. Maybe your hair doesn’t occasionally fall out and down into your clothes and then get stuck somewhere that tickles until you fish it out, but mine does.) Another teacher-friend was in the bathroom too, and I guess I felt the need to explain why I wasn’t making expected noises in the stall, so I said … Oh, never mind what I said. It’ll be more fun if you imagine it, and recall that AT SCHOOL teachers and students use separate bathrooms, but not on field trips.
still cynical
Cynical doesn’t have a problem with idle chitchat. It can be a nice diversion. But save the cancer convo with someone not in the hospital with an ill parent. It’s no wonder her mother-in-law calls her by a different name. She probably annoys her. Light and lively can be damned annoying.
I know. Ouch.
As for the ass wipe comment, that was funny. At least they weren’t talking directly to you.
Jennifer
Actually, I can’t stand idle chitchat when I’m struggling with life and death. My point was when I’m struggling with life and death I forget that anyone else might be also, unless I am jerked out of my space. (Think of the people who had people die on 9/11 for OTHER reasons. Everyone running around looking stricken, and no one knows you have a special reason to be stricken, unless you stop them — and they don’t have attention for you anyway.) People tend to look through housekeeping staff anyway. So I just think she has a right; Peter and Michael must have been a breath of fresh air. But Michael can say how he actually felt. (Remember, I’m assuming the “ouch” was only intended for one space, and “Westward” makes more sense to me.)
still, still cynical
Michael likes it when people spill, even strangers. And he doesn’t judge.
I’m sure he found MeMe quite charming. Nothing to do with her being housekeeping (who by the way aren’t looked through…they are usually looked for as hospitals can be just plain filthy). Boundaries.
michael
I like nothing better than to hear other people’s stories, whether of woe or not. Searching for moments of normality, I called Diane today desiring a blow by blow accounting of her Sunday Sudoku solution, but thinking I was evading her question of how’s Mack, she ignored me.
However, I was thinking today, fondly, of the good old days when posts generated multiple entertaining comments, so I’m thrilled to see these. I mean, who would have ever thought Jennifer would be writing about what she wrote about. She is so prim and proper.
Brother Brian arrived today at 5:30. We all (Peter too) first had dinner at the Gersthaus and then I drove him to the hospital where he could be informed by other than phone calls and blog pics.
Peter and I are thankful for reinforcements – together Brian and I’ll attempt to fix the maze of existing paperwork – and my current plan is to return home Thursday. Brian departs Wednesday afternoon.
I know, so how is my father? I can’t really say. He’s still connected to multiple tubes and machines, and requires continuous dialysis, and is awake to respond by head movements only occasionally. I’d say iffy at best.