Listening....Sort Of

I had a conversation with my son the other day and I hung up wondering, what Marty would have said to him, did I do the things she has taught me over the years or did I do what I too often have done, in conversations.  It happens a lot; I step back, replay a conversation and reach for the things Marty has taught me.  

When you are married to a psychologist, you better remember your talks.  I do.  I remember listening to Marty and interjecting with my best direction and most trite advice.  I hear her telling me, demanding, that I not tell her how to fix her problems.  I remember her chaffing at me trying to tell her how she feels or that what she is feeling is a small thing; “it’s no big deal”, I would say, stupidly. 

She would say, “Well I’m not experiencing a little thing; don’t make me convince you how important this is.”

She was right of course, we can’t tell others how to feel, we can’t tell others how to experience life, we can’t tell others it’s not a big deal if it’s a big deal to them.  That demeans how they feel and man it used to piss Marty off.  I was really quite good at that.

I listened to my son and I heard myself offering platitudes and banal stuff.  I found myself reaching to my fallback position of offering platitudes and sports metaphors, neither of which really helps but it makes me feel like I am doing good work for the world.  

Remarkably I caught myself and tried mightily to quit offering brilliant gems like, “Short time, long life,” you know where you try and bring perspective.  That’s almost as brilliant as, “It is what it is.”

After we disconnected it occurred to me I really was doing one of the things Marty taught me to do in our relationship, listening.  It’s not as easy as it sounds because I’m a fixer and I want to make things all better, I want to participate in a solution, I want to tell you what to do.   

I used to do this with Marty as she would unload her day on me and I would offer sage and learned advice.

Marty, “I don’t want you to fix it, I want you to listen to me and understand me.”

Me, “But I’m just trying to help.”

Marty, “You can’t fix it, I want you to listen and understand.”

I got it.  Sit and listen, really listen and make sure you use affirming words indicating you haven’t drifted off to lala land.  And, please, don’t offer a cure unless asked for a cure.

That’s not exactly it either, using the affirming, listening words is a good thing, but there is that whole understanding thing, you have to listen to understand, you have to pay attention, you have to stop thinking about what pearls of wisdom will come flowing from you long enough to really listen and understand.  

Daughter Erin, the frequent recipient of my pearly wisdom, has tried to coach me up too.  She hears me say too often, “Well, you need to….”  Yes, I admit it I tell people what they need to do.  Marty did that too.  The funny thing is she hated it when I did that to her or our children. 

Erin, the social worker, said, “Try saying to people, “It might help if you”,” instead of, “You need to….”  She’s right of course; she’s her mother’s daughter.

Truth.....what I must do, what I try to do is listen, that’s what Marty would have tried to do, she would have listened, she would have ferreted out feelings, thoughts, ideas, possible solutions, all kind of things.  She would have encouraged conversation, listened and drawn out information and helped whoever she was talking to center their own thoughts.  

Then she would have said, “You need to….”  

She taught me how to do it; that doesn’t mean she necessarily believe just listening applied to her.  She still says, “Rules are for someone else.”

Mostly Listening

I was in our home office when I got a phone call from Marty’s care giver for the day.  It was unusual because she was with Marty in Marty’s room, just down the hall.  Naturally, my anxiety meter went to red.  I mean really, why would LaShonda call me when she could holler at me from the other room.

My office is on one end of our home, Marty’s room is on the other end.  There’s about 75 feet separating the two areas.

 

I answered the phone with my what the hell is going on voice, “What’s up?”

“Where are you?” the voice answered, it was Marty.  It took a minute for my brain to cipher through the incongruity of her voice on LaShonda’s phone in the same house just yards from where I sat.  

My brain engaged, “I’m in the office.”

Marty asked, “What office?  Where?”

“In your house, just down the hall” I said as I was standing up to walk the length of the house to Marty’s room.  

“Why are you calling me?”

“I just wanted to talk to you” she said.  I think, “Aww, isn’t that sweet”.  Actually I felt a pang of guilt and chastised myself for being too quick to assume the worst.

I was in Marty’s room when she finished the sentence and said into the phone while looking at her and LaShonda sitting up in her bed, “I’m right here.”

Marty had been watching and listening as LaShonda talked on the phone as they rested in Marty’s room during the afternoon.  She clearly had decided after eavesdropping on LaShonda that she needed to have her own telephone conversation and LaShonda was more than happy to oblige her.

I took my phone and called daughter Erin, she was out of pocket.  I called son Matt and he was in Las Vegas at a convention.  Then I called the person I should have called first anyway, my mother.  My mother is a world class talker.  She can and does chat with anyone about anything for any length of time and she is great with Marty, filling her ears with all kinds of family gossip.  She is the perfect person to scratch Marty’s itch and she luckily she answered my call.

I explained what was going on and handed Marty over to my mother and they talked and talked and talked some more, they chatted for 30 minutes.  This is not a small thing for Marty, she doesn’t really talk like that anymore, she used to, but not anymore.  

You can always make Marty’s day if you come and talk to her, to her, not me.  That’s what my mother does.  Marty likes it when I’m in the background and she is in charge.  She loves it when someone other than me focuses their attention on her.

Marty won’t carry the conversation but she loves listening to others tell her stories.  She is a great listener and never reveals a secret, mostly because she can’t remember the details.

My mother was thrilled with the communication.  In truth, she is always the one who comes and talks and whispers secrets to Marty, not to me, not to the caregivers, but to Marty.  Marty loves it, she craves it, it makes her feel a part, it makes her feel sort of normal.  My mother does that simply by telling Marty stories, simply by talking to Marty and letting Marty listen and absorb the warmth and conversation of someone other than me.  It’s a big deal.

That’s the lesson here.  I’m the one who likes the rhythm in our day.  I’m the one who craves the familiar, the rut, Marty simply puts up with it.  She likes something, someone different, someone who will talk to her, who will fill her head with normal talk and not just ask her how she is doing.  My mother knows this and does it.

The telephone call with my mother did not completely surprise me.  The length did, Marty’s engagement did.  It shouldn’t have, it was another lesson from Marty…….and my mother.  Sometimes I need to get out of the way and let the pros talk and just listen.  

It’s what Marty likes to do, she likes to listen, she likes to listen to an occasional different voice.

The Funniest Person She Knows

We were in the car, just cruising, when daughter Erin called to wish her Mom a happy Mother’s Day.  We talked over the hands free, Erin talked, I talked, Marty talked.  It was a nice Mother’s Day conversation.

After we disconnected the call I said, “That was very nice.”

Marty, “Yes it was.”

Me, “Did it warm your cockles?” making a reference to the idiom “cockles of your heart”.

Marty, says with some degree of faux earnestness, “So that’s what that was, I thought it was heart burn.”…..Rim Shot….

We were at a red light, I looked at her sipping her Diet Coke wearing a self-satisfied smile, and I laughed out loud.

“That was good,” I said.

“Yes it was,” she replied with an air of confidence.

That’s Marty; she is still the funniest person she knows.

Watch Marty; watch her eyes when conversation is going on around her.  At times her brain is simply overwhelmed by the stimuli around her and she checks out and her mind turns completely inward.  But, if she is not over stimulated, if the distraction meter is not too high, watch her eyes and you can see her brain slip into comic drive.

At supper (that’s dinner in the south) I try and reduce the distractions.  We may have the television on briefly to catch the weather and the latest “wheel of justice” segment as the local news rallies to catch the next most wanted criminal.  I generally turn the television off so Marty can focus on the task at hand, eating.  This is when we can talk and laugh a little.  

One of our caregivers has new toy Chihuahua who goes by the name of Majyk, or some such corrupted spelling of a normal word.  It’s a grey little rat that has made herself at home running around our house.  We are dog people and this dog, despite its rodent like appearance,  is pretty darn cute.

The dog was running away from her mistress, Nykkie, and Nykkie was fast walking after the dog, yammering.  She yammers a lot.  She was calling to the dog and talking to her and asking her things like, “What are you doing?  Where are you going?”

The dog kept running around, her rabies and name tags jingling as she ran.  Nykkie called out to her again, “Where are you going?”

Marty looks up from her plate, stops chewing and looks straight at me, a twinkle in her eye, her brain fully in gear, “Shh, be quiet, let’s see if the dog answers her.”

Marty then is seized with suppressed laughter, trying not to spit out the mostly chewed food in her mouth.  She started to turn a little red from trying not to laugh at her own humor.

I’m telling you, watch the eyes; they will tell you the real story.  Marty’s still the funniest person she knows. 

She's Not My Mother

It was a new clinic for us but we are practiced enough in the medical arts to simply assume our normal positions.  Marty was in the dental chair looking around the office, surveying the exam room looking at the doctor’s diplomas, checking his credentials.  I was sitting in the chairs at the wall.  I was behind the nurse answering her questions, trying to put a face on Marty.

The nurse, focused on her computer screen, asking questions, looked up for just a moment and asked, “Now is she your mother?”

It was not the first time this question had been asked.  With my reading glasses on the end of my nose I turned, looked at the nurse over the top of my glasses and said, “No, I appreciate the fact that you think I look 30 but I’m her husband, have been for 36 years.”

The nurse looked up, looked at me, looked at Marty, “Oh.”

Yeah.  I get it.  When you look at Marty’s chart, when you look at her meds, when you look at her medical history it reads like someone who is 80, not a 58 year old woman.  I get it, when you look at your computer the patient doesn’t necessarily match the real person.

Trust me on this, I don’t look young enough to be Marty’s son, our son does.  And trust me on this; for a woman who has been beat up by not one but two cerebrovascular accidents, Marty doesn’t look 80, given her history she looks great.  Sometimes people just don’t look. 

It really doesn’t surprise me…..too much.  These people, people in the health care business, men and women dedicated to the healing arts, see hundreds of people a month depending on where they work.  Those people, those good people, get a routine; they get into a work rhythm and sometimes lose sight of the person sitting in the room with them.  It’s hard for them to understand this might be your first time as a patient.  

Personally I’m a rhythm kind of guy, I really get it.  Routine works and the questions asked are important questions.  I want them to know Marty’s history; I want them to know and to notate all of her medicines and everything she is allergic to, that stuff is life sustaining information.  Data is good. 

The good folks get the data and then they start mentally collating that data and how that pertains to why the patient is there.  That collation then gets them to a norm, it gets them to something they deal with multiple times in a given day and they make reasonable assumptions based on that data.  In Marty’s case, they assume she is an older woman with a litany of health issues.

She’s not; she’s too young to have endured what she has endured.  I know it’s hard, when you see a lot of people, when you repeat the same procedures day after day, to see past the data, to look up from the computer screen.  The big bright eye of the computer monitor pulls the focus away from the human in the room.    

It’s not just in health care.  It happens in any environment where you deal with repetition and a lot of people, the human gets shoved aside and only the patient or the customer remains.  It happens everywhere, but, when that it happens at Subway they are just making you a sandwich.  That’s not near as scary as oral surgery.

There are a lot of nurses and doctors and therapists and x-ray techs that somehow avoid that sort of dehumanizing trap.  They are the real practitioners of health care.  

We are really fortunate with all of Marty’s doctors.  They run good ships.  They know Marty; they see Marty as more than a brittle, complicated patient.  They see her as the person, the human she is.  The nurses and the office staff at the office of Great and Wise greet Marty, hug her and talk to her and see her as someone special.  To them she is famous, she is Ms Marty and they care for her and see her as an individual.  

Some of these folks have known Marty for years, some knew her before the strokes, most know her only as she is today.  We have loved and lost several good nurses and office folks at that office.  But the new folks treat Marty as a person too,  they have taken their lead from Great and Wise himself and he insists on having patient care be care for a person, a fellow traveler, not just another patient.

I know it’s hard, I know it requires extra work, extra effort to break out of the routine.  It means you have to look up and truly look at the people sitting in the chairs in your room and that sometimes takes time, it means you have to slow down just a bit.  

I know, I understand it’s hard when to look at so much stuff, so much critical data and not be entranced by that data.  I know gathering and coalescing the data sucks focus from people.  But you know, some day that person, that patient who has never been in the office before, might be you, , some day it will be a loved one in that chair and I guarantee you will want whoever is caring for them to remember that they are not one of many, they are unique, they are people.  

In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t a big deal.  Marty wasn’t paying attention and she is not easily offended.  The nurse doing our intake was pleasant, competent, professional and kind.  She wasn’t the first to ask the question, she won’t be the last.  I just want them to be sure and look at us before they ask any questions.