OLD FOLK'S CARE

I was reminiscing about taking care of Aunt May McPherson who came to live with us in 2005 when she was 96 years old. Aunt May had never married and was a pretty salty lady. A dedicated Christian lady, but she knew what she liked and didn’t like. She was mad at us when we brought her to our home and wouldn’t let her go back to live in her own place. She had been falling a lot and cracking her head. We would bring her here, then she would get better and ask to go home. It was late September when the last fall in her home occurred. So I informed her that we were keeping her with us because we were afraid of her falling in the snow when she went out to get her newspaper and mail. She put up a fuss and I began to cry. I said, “What kind of family do you think we are to let you lay out in a snow drift for two days and no one would know.” She raised her hands in truce and said “OK you win.” From that moment on she had the attitude, “I guess I will just have to tough it out.” And tough she was.

She was raised on a homestead on the Colorado high plains, 70 miles east of Colorado Springs. The oldest of 4 children meant a lot of work for her in her growing-up years. She had to help farm with mules. She drove the school bus when she was 7 and picked up other children and took them to school. Oh yes, the school bus was a horse and wagon.

When she was eighteen, she began to teach in a one room school house where her job was teacher, janitor, she built the fire in the pot bellied stove, she cooked a hot meal on that stove for the children every day, and she taught all 8 classes. She went to college in the summer and taught in the winter. She taught Sunday School until she was 85 then she decided the kids weren’t taught to behave like they were in the old days so she quit.

We sat at her feet and listened to the stories of the old days and the stories she had and sometimes she would rewind and we would hear them again. One day we noticed she was acting strange she was hearing voices in her head. She made us put our ear up to hers to see if we could hear them too. We couldn’t, of course, so she said, “The reason you can’t hear them because they are not of this world.” Later she believed a man was going to hang her. Another time she took a roll of toilet paper and unrolled it slowly all day. She said it was letters and pictures my sweetheart husband Mac (her nephew) had sent me when he was overseas and she wanted to be sure they were kept safe for me.

We were concerned about the behavior so we took her to the doctor and they did a urine test and found an infection. We got that cleared up and no more hallucinations. What I am hoping this story will do is alert others who read this that sometimes when there are no symptoms but bizarre behavior don’t necessarily chalk it up to dementia or Alzheimer’s, it might be an infection. She had no burning or pain of any kind, and we thought she was leaving us in her mind. Yea, we got her back.

The Lord called her from our home to Heaven July 31, 2007. She was over 98. She had hoped to make 100. We sure do miss her.


CHERYLISM: Aunt May had twisted toes and blamed it on the pointed toed high heel shoes she wore as a girl. Cheryl saw a girl on TV wearing high heel pointed toe shoes (stilettos I think they are called) and Cheryl said, “If you wear those shoes it can give you elderly toes.”