Eulogy For Joan: Four Decades Of Memories

She grew up on a Minnesota farm with 4 siblings, all but one of them sisters. She divorced an alcoholic, not necessarily because of the alcohol but because it enabled a long history of abusive behavior. They had one daughter, well grown and gone by the time I met Joan. In the first few years I knew her she lost her mother, a particularly difficult time for her, and had to watch a sister succumb to the ravages of ALS. She worked at the University of Minnesota Hospitals in an office position. Besides venting about the frustrations of office politics, she found the irony in their putting up braille signs in the parking ramps on campus in places where presumably only the drivers would need the information on the signs. She also had invested in a duplex in Minneapolis and rented the top part, kept a garden in her back yard while growing beautiful lilacs and many other flowers around the house and yard edges, along with a patch of huge raspberries from which she shared starter plants with me when I finally had my own yard with space for them. Inside she had a large south window full of thriving houseplants, and lived with a pair of very affectionate cats.

When I spoke with her  recently she had forgotten much of that beautifully tended yard. By then she had forgotten much that I remembered from our early years together, but I can share (some of) those memories for her.  We met at a support group for resingled people - separation, divorce, widowed -  where she was a facilitator. It happened to also be where I met Steve, and her future husband Bob. We all became facilitators, and each of us at various times wound up on the management board for the parent organization. She first became important to me and our actual friendship started at one of the workshops put on by that organization. At the time I was an attendee and she was facilitating the group I had been assigned to. Something she disclosed about her own life made it finally safe for me to disclose something about my own life, and move forward from there in dealing with it. I remain grateful.

We became the kind of friends who could call each other up, after half an hour start making our excuses for needing to hang up, but still finding things to talk about for the next half hour or more. One memory that just popped into my head this evening was of one the annual Halloween parties the support groups put on. Most of us went in costume, though they weren't mandatory. (I once showed up as a courier, still in the uniform I'd worked in all day.) I had worked hard at designing and sewing mine as a red crayon. She went as a can of beer with a foaming top, shown by a very silly and very curly pale wig  for the foam. She won a prize for hers. That might be the same year Steve won one, coming as a... well, nobody quite knew, but some guessed a kind of space alien, wrapped in layers and layers of mylar wound around and around him. I'm not sure he knew just what it was either, but as long as we were intrigued by it, he didn't care how it was defined.

Joan and Bob began dating after several years in the support group, and it became serious. Work transferred him south, and it became a commuting relationship. They finally decided Joan would relocate to Arizona to live with him. I overheard her worrying about whether her stepfather would be a safe driver for her moving truck, so I volunteered to drive it instead. I'd had experience with one ton trucks, and this was upgraded to an automatic transmission, so even easier. Plus I knew the route, since my then snowbird parents brought me down there a couple times a year to help them out, including driving their car back and forth while they flew.  

Joan had another friend, Carol, share driving duties for her car, and meals and motels were paid. Mostly that trip went smoothly. The glaring exception was after a supper stop where it was full dark when we emerged from the restaurant. Note this was before cell phones. As we were getting on the freeway ramp, a semi had parked on the ramp and I had to wait for a couple minutes for it to move enough that I could get past it in the truck. Of course Joan and Carol were first, having no problem getting around the parked truck in their car. It never occurred to them I would be delayed. I worried about finding them for about ten minutes until I finally passed a car on the shoulder of the freeway which blinked its lights at me, pulled out and swung in just ahead of me. It took that long in the dark for them to realize there was no moving truck behind them!

Before hitting Phoenix, Joan led us off the freeway to Montezuma's Well, which we all enjoyed exploring. We even all saw our first roadrunner along the road in. We had plenty of time to kill for that excursion as Bob's unloading helpers weren't scheduled until the afternoon and we were making good time.

When Joan and Bob got married, it was a Las Vegas wedding, and I flew down with another mutual woman friend from the same support group, shared a motel room with her, plus a trip to Hoover Dam on the bus, and a stroll down the strip to see the variety of casinos. I believe we spent a total of five minutes inside one, each putting a quarter in a slot machine promising somebody would win an enormous amount. It wasn't us. But the wedding was lovely, the reception delicious, and the red-eye flight back exhausting.

Until she retired she worked in Arizona for ADOT. I'm not sure in what order each retired, or when they moved to Sun City West. I know they lived there before my parents quit snowbirding, since I easily memorized the short distance between the two homes while I was visiting, and we had plenty of time to visit and for them to show me different parts of the state, including an introduction for me to Thai food, a favorite of Joan's. At one visit I expressed an interest in relocating down there myself, so they spent a Saturday taking me to see several versions of more affordable housing in the area, most having open houses that day, but one being lived in by a friend of Joan's and open to a visit from a stranger.

There were years when our friendship slowed to occasional long distance phone calls. My parents no longer traveled, and I couldn't afford to. Eventually Steve and I changed our long term friendship into what it is today, and we made our own retirement plans for Arizona. Still, we were busy, they were busy, life moved on. When I got an invitation to join a small group of demonstrators, a local branch of Grandmothers For Peace, it meant a time to both sit at a busy corner in our folding chairs, hold signs, and chat with Joan in the small breaks between traffic noise. The first year or so I was in my scooter, and Bob needed some exercise, so we would travel the square of the walking lanes of the major intersection with our signs until Bob had gotten enough exercise. Once he wasn't up to that, mostly we sat, Joan and I, amongst the others, and talked to each other. We'd go as a group to a local restaurant for brunch afterwards, and talk about the day and our lives, getting to know each of the protesters, occasionally changing restaurants, trying new menus.

Then Bob died. A while after that, covid killed our get-togethers. Joan's larger car held all the signs we set out or held, and some were heavy. Joan recently had been diagnosed with some rare form of leukemia, but stubbornly insisted on being strong enough to show up early and put all the signs up. After covid quarantining pretty much ended, the job became too big and we were out of the habit of protesting, still not sure we were safe in a group. Some of us connected via email, but none as the group we'd been, and no more brunches. During that time she kept me and others apprised of her brother's epic motorcycle journeys, connecting us to his photo blog. We also saw pictures of a grand niece, and photos of new pets in her daughter's and her husband's lives.

Covid did bring Joan to our house once, when she came as a witness (and camera person) for Steve's and my wedding.  The legal one, not the commitment ceremony we'd had in Minnesota years earlier before heading to Arizona to buy a house on our honeymoon. That one had all the bells and whistles, but she and Bob couldn't make it up. This one was out in the carport, 5 humans total present, socially distanced, casually dressed, everybody seated, sealed water bottles and cookies for a "reception". She came with us into the back yard for a couple photos in front of a bush in full bloom at the time before leaving, nobody that day letting covid fears stop us from exchanging those long supportive hugs from back in support group days.

When Joan began to get worse, she and I instituted a daily afternoon phone call wellness check. Suddenly we were back in the hour long phone calls, often ending because light was fading and she needed to get out to feed the birds while they were still up. The calls got shorter after several months, and suddenly I heard from her daughter that Joan was in the hospital. Once she was able to be home Pam would be taking care of her mom's needs until she was better. The care included making sure Joan got her sleep in the afternoons, and between having a full time on site wellness checker and more naps, the calls pretty much stopped  again for a while. I managed to visit Joan a few times after her daughter went home, but by then she was needing a walker most of the time. We'd gotten used to her needing a cane to get around during the last of our demonstrations, but now it took a long time to get to the phone, to even schedule a visit, and might even require a call back later if she had been in the process of taking food to her chair in front of the TV to watch her favorite political news shows. 

 Joan and I had a spring visit this year where I saw her X-mas tree was still up and decorated. She tried to apologize for being too tired to take it down and I assured her it was all about her own personal pleasure and all the wonderful memories from previous years with Bob the tree held, and not about some arbitrary calendar. It was still up last time I stopped by the house this fall to see Pam. That particular visit Pam had located a few things I had given Joan over the years, after asking if I wanted them back. I did, now treasured as memories of our long friendship. One went way back to when I had come down to visit/help my parents, a photo I'd taken on a trip with them. That location was open desert then, a very rare rain puddle along the road under a saguaro reflecting it and the sky, the area now long since developed. I had forgotten it over the years until seeing it again.

I began to hear that her computer was broken, and she couldn't get my emails. All summer I'd been sending out shots of flowers from the Minnesota garden, or a nature preserve, or whatever. She'd had her IT guy, the son of a mutual friend Rosemary whom she loved referring to as "Rosemary's Baby", out to fix it but it still didn't work. Neither did her phone quite often. We heard later that they worked just fine, but her brain wasn't able to comprehend them anymore. It happened with the TV remote later, and that became hopeless for her once she was in hospice. It turned out she had something called "white matter disease". 

The  difficulties that added to her life and self care regimen put her in the hospital once more and brought her daughter back down to stay for a while. It was that which pushed her decision to stop taking her chemotherapy meds and to go into hospice. She lost some of the side effects of the chemo, which actually made her final months more comfortable for her in a few ways. She also decided to ignore her celiac disease and spend her last weeks enjoying as many of the foods she used to love as she could tolerate, so she and her daughter would plan on which treat Pam would bring her the next day to eat. The list included spaghetti, pizza, various sandwiches, sweet rolls and breads. She merely had to think of something and Pam would spend the time needed to locate and buy what Mom wanted, making sure any leftovers went into the refrigerator at the hospice home and not into the mouths of any hungry staff or other residents still mobile enough to get to it, once Pam had a chat with the management.

Joan nearly always had one or more cats in her life for as long as I knew her. This time was no exception, but once in hospice a decision had to be made. The aging cat had its own health problems, and was considered unadoptable. Before a vet was called to the house for a gentle euthanasia, Joan came home on a final visit to her own bed. A photo exists of the cat on the bed with her one final time.

I did manage to get a few visits in while Joan was in hospice. The first time Penny, another friend from peace demonstrations, was there, who later brought Joan her ballot so she could vote in this final election. She's also been my go-to person for information on judges and other lesser known candidates who can be hard to find information on. Another visit one of her sisters from out of state was there along with Pam and a big pizza which they shared. I did manage to coordinate with Pam a day to visit when I could have private time with Joan. Groups can be exhausting, visits needed to be short, and Pam welcomed some time off. By now I'd spent a couple of hours with Pam over several brief occasions, and each one gave me more respect for her and appreciation of all she was doing for her mother. I mentioned as much to Joan on that visit.

The fourth visit was much shorter, as by now Joan was tiring easily. She couldn't manage to stand up for a good-bye hug, so I leaned down to her for what turned out to be a very brief one. The fifth visit didn't happen. Pam got hold of me before I was to leave and let me know her mom wasn't up to a visit, also adding her opinion that there wasn't much time left. As a retired nurse, Pam's seen her share of patients dying and I respect her educated opinion. Still, it was a shock to open her email last evening and find out that Joan had died just over an hour before I read it. She had told Pam when she left her house for hospice not to pay the hospice place for more than a two month stay. She lived two months and one day there.

Joan wasn't religious. Somewhere between agnostic and atheistic covers it, according to our conversations.  Bob was a devout Catholic, and she commented to me once that one of the reasons they got married was that she got tired of being something Bob had to confess on a regular basis until they were. I don't know if she believed in some kind of afterlife where she would reunite with Bob. Only she can know that now. If it's possible, I'm sure they are, with the strong connection they had. I'm not much of a believer either, but it's one of the things I kept telling Daddy in his last days, even his last night, that Gladys would be there waiting for him. He believed. At the very least it brought him comfort. Joan deserved that kind of comfort too.

Rest in peace, my friend. I will miss you. You will always be treasured in my memories.

November 20, 2022.