When I go on vacation, I try to really be away. I try to leave all of those things that distract me on a daily basis back at home, preferably kicked underneath the couch next to an old sock. I try to avoid email, and especially emails with titles like “Emergency Vacation Bible School Meeting!” things like that can get a headache started before I even read it.
Yes, the point of a vacation is to get away and to relax and if you take all of your daily life stuff with you, then chances are you’re not going to have a vacation, you’re just going to have the same week you would have had, but at the grand canyon.
There is, of course, a downside to this disconnectedness. I have a pair of friends who are likely to become engaged this summer and I knew that there was a very good chance it would happen while we were away. I thought about it off an on, wondering if all of my friends were calling one another, toasting champagne and showing off diamond rings. (Or maybe diamonelle rings – they work in the public schools).
In fact, that didn’t happen (still waiting), but I did come home to some other surprises. No less than two of my friends who had both been struggling with fertility issues discovered that they were pregnant. One, who had gone through a round of semi-aggressive fertility treatment is now pregnant with twins. And the other, a dear friend of mine who works at a school in Africa, went to a fertility specialist in the states to start a round of treatments only to discover that she was 27 weeks pregnant (You see, you hear about it all the time, and it really does happen).
Both of these friends found out about their pregnancies about 2 days after I had left for vacation. And in the midst of the excitement of finding out about their news, I had a twinge of regret that I hadn’t been here to share in the excitement right when it happened.
I also returned to a phone message from someone I didn’t know. It was one of those ominous phone calls.
“Hello, this is Debby Selvage, Pat’s sister. If you could give me a call, I would appreciate it.”
The tone of the message was even - giving away nothing and everything at the same time.
Pat Selvage was a dear friend of mine who I first met when I worked as a driver for her in college. Pat was diagnosed with a sever case of juvenile arthritis when she was young and had spent most of her life in a wheelchair, her body rigid, unable to move without assistance from someone else. She had limited use of her hands and feet and that was about it. But Pat led an amazing life, despite these limitations. She went away to college, became a social worker, bought a house, lived on her own, got a job working at a crisis hotline at the hospital, and volunteered at several organizations.
Throughout all of this, she was unable to get out of bed, get dressed, get into a car, get to work, prepare meals, or travel any significant distance without the assistance of someone else. Pat had built up a small army of people who assisted her in the daily challenges of life. I came into her circle as a driver. I would come to her house early in the morning before classes started, and with the aid of a half dozen afghans, pillows and blankets that all had to be arranged in the most exacting of orders, squeeze her into my 2 door ‘86 Celica and drive her to work, help her into her wheelchair and send her off on her day.
It was a small thing. An easy way to earn a little money that required little more of me than a strong back and a willingness to get up a couple of hours early. It was just a job, but it somehow became more. In those 15 minutes drives to and from work, we talked, laughed, listened to music and told each other stories about our lives. Pat especially liked listening to some of the Broadway musical soundtracks I had (I know, I’m a major dork. I think we’ve established that).
She would talk about how much she loved the theater, but how hard it was to ever go. Pat required 5-10 different people a week coming for an hour or two here and there just to get her through her days. And this group of people was ever changing as they moved, or graduated, or proved unreliable or incompetent. It was an additional full time job for her just to schedule this never-ending logistical time table of part time employees. And anything that threw this delicate schedule out of balance, such as a night at the theater, had rippling repercussions.
But then we made a discovery. Pat lived about 45 minutes from New York City and I decided that, despite the cost and hassle, we should go into the big apple to see something on Broadway together. I started calling around and discovered that in addition to theaters reserving seats for patrons in wheelchairs, they also greatly reduced the price of the tickets for that individual and their guest. This meant that Pat and her poor college student friend could get last minute tickets to a sold out show for as low as $20 a piece. It was as if a veil had been lifted and we suddenly saw the possibilities.
Before I graduated the next year, we probably saw 6 different shows. It was an amazing opportunity, both of us able to go do something that we never would have been able to accomplish without the other.
It was never easy. Negotiating a fragile person in a wheelchair through parking garages, busy Manhattan streets and then finally hordes of Iowa tourists, was a harrowing task for both of us, but the rewards were immense and out of it a beautiful and unexpected friendship developed.
After I graduated, I moved 1,000 miles away to Mississippi and my daily visits with Pat stopped, but our friendship didn’t. We communicated through occasional letters and phone calls, but neither of us was very good at that. But once a year, I made an effort to get back up to New Jersey so Pat and I could go into New York to see a play. It got to the point where whenever I called Pat knew immediately to reach for her calendar.
For a dozen years we were theater buddies and friends. I called her when each of my three children was born and she reveled in their pictures and stories. I listened, sometimes pained, as her health worsened, she had to give up working, and she told innumerable stories of employees who would call in sick or just not show up, never seeming to understand that this didn’t just mean that McDonalds would be short a fry cook, but that a woman would be trapped in her bed, calling desperately on the phone for someone to come rescue her.
We were supposed to go see Mary Poppins last December. By this point, Pat required a third person to go with us to assist her. We tried to coordinate schedules, but somewhere along the lines, the whole event fell apart and I got tied up with all of the preparations that go along with Christmas in a family of five.
I felt bad, but it wasn’t necessarily my fault and I knew that once Summer arrived and life slowed down, we could all try again. Mary Poppins would still be there.
Although she didn’t tell many people, Pat’s health had been weakening, and while my family was away on vacation she became disoriented, backed her wheelchair off of her ramp at home and suffered a head trauma that she wasn’t able to survive. She passed away before she ever reached the hospital.
It’s a sad, undignified ending to a woman who fought her whole life for the dignity and normalcy that most of us take for granted. I never got a chance to take her to the theater one more time, and although everyone tells me that it is illogical, it haunts me.
I’m going to miss those annual trips into New York. I’m going to miss the conversations on the way in and the theatrical criticism and analysis on the way out. I’m going to miss those half dozen ugly checkered blankets and cushions that allowed Pat to travel around, arranged differently into every vehicle like a game of Tetris until it fit her perfectly. I’m going to miss the inspiration I always felt from being around a woman who sometimes got frustrated with the little problems in life, because she was so busy not being affected by the massive, room filling problems. She was a gem.
So I returned from my two week vacation to life and death on a grand scale. The whole continuum of existence played out in a couple of innocent phone calls. It is easy for me to sink into my own self centeredness and accept the myth that the world can hardly turn on its axis without my presence. Yet miracles and devastations still manage to occur whether I’m here to witness them or not.
Our control over the lives of others is miniscule and sometimes the control over our own lives isn’t much better. You just have to do the best you can, despite the odds, to do what you know is right and to live the best life possible, one that hopefully changes yourself and touches others.
Pat taught me that.
Obituary: http://www.dailyrecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008807130343