Angels

I would tend to believe more in extra-terrestrials than in supernatural beings, but this week I met an Angel. She came in the form of a 22-year-old young lady named Alyssa, working for Abiding Care, a home healthcare agency. She is tall, blond, competant, smart and going to college to become a medical technician. She will be coming to my Mom's house twice a week until we feel we don't need her services anymore, which may be NEVER, if we have our druthers!

After Alyssa's first day, when she took everything off the kitchen counter and cleaned like that old White Tornado of fifties TV commercials, and then cleaned the toaster until it was like new, and made coffee, and waited on my Mom, and had an intelligent conversation with me about religion, and then made dinner for both Mom and Stanley, (the best burgers I've ever had, exclaimed my brother), I am not sure we ever want to give her up. She is a combination of personal maid, housekeeper, cook, companion, all rolled into one $20 per hour package of energy and good will. She has the ability to be objective about the not so clean house, my scraggly-haired, pill-taking, pot smoking brother--all of it. She is allowing me to step back and not worry so much about my Mom and the care she might not be getting from my brother. Two days a week I can breath easier. Two days a week I can know that for 4 hours at least, everything is being taken care of. She is going to make pot roast next week, she was cleaning out the refrigerator when I left her yesterday( a tremendous task), she had cleaned the bathroom, she had made coffee again and she planned on making dinner and bathing Mom before she left at 4:00.

Mom, Stanley and I have bonded with this marvelous girl--my brother may be falling in love with her for all I know. If I had to compare her looks to a current personality it would be to Scarlet Johansen. She isn't as classically beautiful, but she has those strong Scandinavian features, and a body and character equally strong, as though she has endured many hardships in her short life. Perhaps she has seen a lot in her time with Abiding Care. Perhaps she was born this way, or raised this way, but whatever has made her the lovely young person that she is, it's something my little family is reaping the benefits of. She has made all of us stronger and more confident. She is giving relief to both my brother and me, and she is doing much-needed cleaning that I was trying to do, but didn't have the energy for. Cleaning the frig was on my list of to-do things and cleaning the bathroom, too, but I hadn't gotten there yet. Now I don't have to do them and I can concentrate on the doctor's appointments and later the physical therapy appointments and getting the prescriptions filled and the other little things that Alyssa can't do.

Because of Alyssa I feel much, much better this week. I can see light instead of being mired in anger, sadness and dread. I can regroup and make lists and enjoy my husband and my garden and clean my own house and bake muffins. Friday I will be able to go out to lunch with friends because Alyssa will be with my Mom. This week I have taken two days just for myself, not doing anything in service to my Mom. Yesterday when I left her, Mom was reading one of her favorite types of books--a biography of Joan Crawford--it's the first time I've seen her reading since her fall. We are figuring out how to care for her, she is feeling less pain and the physician's assistant who she has been seeing says she is healing well and in two weeks should be able to start physical therapy. With the help of our angel, we should all be okay.