Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.

– Mary Elizabeth Frye

Whenever we encounter another person in love, we learn something new about God.

-Pope Francis

 

I am sorting through my sock drawer on a rainy Sunday morning.  I need to get rid of them and replace them with my new compression socks, but I just can’t seem to place them in the bag for Goodwill,  Not the trouser socks and peds that I don’t really care about, they are the first to go.  The wonderfully comfortable gold toe socks from JC Penney that I received as a Christmas present from a Secret Santa 5 years ago are harder to put away.  But hardest of all are the fleece socks that were my grandmother’s:  solid colors, stripes, Christmas themes, and a plain turquoise pair with side seams on the foot which I call my “elf socks.”

My grandmother had lived to be almost 103, and she died at home. For about the last three years of her life, she became uncooperative about taking her bath and started to need much physical assistance to get in and out of the shower. Once a week (or more if she had an “accident”) I would help my mother get Grandma into the bath, and I would bathe her.  Grandma would yell out things such as “What are you doing to me?”, or “You’re killing me!”, or my mother’s favorite, “Well shit on you!”.  I’d laugh, and she’d scowl.  Mom would help me get her out of the bath, and once she was seated, I would dry her off and rub Nivea lotion on her legs, back, and ankles to prevent pressure sores.  I’d sign Italian opera to her, and she;d smile.  I’d powder her toes and her coulu with Desiten powder, then I’d put her into a soft robe.  I’d towel-dry and comb her hair and leave a small towel around her shoulders because she didn’t like water on her neck.  The I would ease those fleece socks onto her feet, followed by her pink slippers.  There was always a little adjusting that she needed to do – I never could quite get those socks the way she wanted them – and then I would grab her walker and help her get back to the living room.  I’d trim her finger nails and give her a kiss, and she would say, “Thank you.”

These are the memories that come back to me as I hold the socks.  I also have a dress and a shirt of hers that will never fit me but which bring back such vivid memories that I leave them on hangers in my closet.  I have scarves that smell of her Alberto VO5 gray hair dressing, the kind that looks like purple toothpaste and smells like Grandma.

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In January 2012, I had been having trouble with shortness of breath, especially when i climbed stairs.  I had chalked it up to weight gain and being out of shape.  Then one day I was attempting to climb the stairs at the college to get to my office when suddenly I had to sit down with a sharp pain in my chest and tingling in my arms.  I left work and went to my mother’s house to rest, but my brother was there, and he drove me to the emergency room.  I was hooked up to an ECG, and blood was drawn.  I had an elevated white blood cell count and a subtle change on my ECG.  After a stress test and workup by a cardiologist, it was confirmed that I had a healthy heart.  I did, however, have a virus that was irritating my heart muscle.  I was told that whenever we catch a virus, such as the flu, and it causes muscle aches and pains, it also has the same effect on the heart.  Most of the time (95%) we never notice, but sometimes we become symptomatic as I was.  I was scared and tired.  I had seen the movie Beaches for goodness sake, and the Barbara Hershey character certainly wasn’t okay after her heart caught a virus!

But I needn’t have worried because my heart was (and is) healthy.  I just now have an annoying arrhythmia that is not serious.

One Sunday in March of this year, I started to have some chest discomfort; it wasn’t pain, just an uneasy, uncomfortable feeling.  I put a stethoscope to my chest and auscultated an arrhythmia.  My husband drove me to the emergency room, and I was given nitroglycerin and aspirin and hooked up to an ECG.  I had a mild tachyarrhythmia with occasional premature ventricular complexes.  In other words, my heart was beating fast, and part of my heart was conducting an electrical signal before the muscle had enough time to relax from the last contraction, so I was “skipping” beats.  After two nights of observation and a nuclear stress test, my heart was declared healthy, and I was discharged on a beta-blocker. The medication slowed down my heart rate, and the irregular rhythm became less frequent.

However, while I was on the beta-blocker, I started to have pitting edema in my legs, and it got so bad that I could no longer wear regular shoes.  The cardiologist took me off the medication and ordered a vascular test.  I figured that it was just a formality.  I work out three times a week at Curves, and I have individual pilates instruction on Saturdays,  I was walking two miles after work every day until my legs got so swollen that it was too difficult.  In other words, I considered myself to be healthy and reasonably fit, even with the 50 extra hypothyroid and menopause pounds that I carry around.

The cardiologist told me he had good news and bad news about the vascular test.  My superficial veins are fine – Yes! No varicose veins for me.  However, I have deep venous insufficiency.  It will progress, and once it does, it will be difficult to control,  I need to purchase 30- 40 mm Hg compression socks and wear them daily.

For now, I’m fairly asymptomatic.  The edema has resolved, and I’ve been able to wear my dress shoes twice this week,  I’m wearing old-man compression socks, those “sexy” kind that reach below the knee and make me feel like an old woman in shorts, skirts, or dresses.  The socks are hideous.  I wonder what happened to that young, gorgeous woman I used to be, when I still had a thyroid that worked, and I could eat and wear whatever I wanted.

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Those socks, grandma’s socks, are bring me to tears. I cannot let go.  I pick up the pair of elf socks and slip them back into my dresser.  I will wear them to bed in the winter time.  I call my mother and ask her if she will take them – and wear them,  She says she will.  I now have two bags, one for Goodwill and one for my mother.  I take a deep breath, and I let go.