Skip to main content

Kate

I think about my friend, Kate Struby, who died from this horrible disease in 2013. She lived here at Bailey Boushay House before I did.

I reached out to Kate online through FaceBook because I loved her photograph with her head thrown back in laughter. I also loved her posts. I guess I just loved her spirit.

I got to finally meet her one month before she died. I happened to be at the University of Washington Medical Center for my quarterly appointment when I saw her FaceBook post. She was awake and in the medical ICU. She was a mere few floors down. I would not be stopped. Relativeor no, I would meet my FaceBook friend.

Thank God I did. I rolled into the room to find a beautiful, ethere.al woman flanked by two friends. Although it was an impromtu visit, she said she knew me immediately.I was in awe of her with her fiery spirit despite the ravages of our shared disease. She, unable to lift even a finger, lifted my spirit.

Comments

  1. Hi, Tina,
    May I share this post with some of the residents I visit? Our culture is so much about a person's value being dependent on how much they can DO, for themselves and others, that they've bought into the lie that "less capable" means "less valuable" I'm constantly going around telling them "You're a human BEING, not a human DOING!" but it's hard for them to believe. I like to share encouraging things like this with them, but I won't without your permission.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I would be honored and delighted to have you share my posts or blog for the good of others. You're a wonderful person, Debbie!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Remember...

I remember catching fireflies,  putting them in a jar, as a girl of five. I picked pears off a tree that overhung an alleyway on my route home from school, then enjoyed the forbidden fruit. .I had a golden cat who chased a gray mouse through our living room sending my mother, 3-year old sister, and me screaming atop the sofa and chairs. We lived in a farmhouse and I watched Romper Room. A daddy longlegs skittered across my dirty kid legs as I teeter-tottered on a broken kitchen chair back. I played grocery store and laid out a bedroll for group nap time in preschool. We lived in an apartment attached to a bakery. My maternal grandparents visited and a photo was snapped. Grandma held Dawn and Grandpa held me. I held Grandpa's chin. Walking through the back of the flour-caked kitchen, I saw scrumptious pastries and colorful toys stuck in the cupcakes with my hungry kids eyes. We lived in a two-story apartment building next door to a large farmer's field.  That field was my...

I Heart Trellis

Early in our relationship, though we were traditional nine-to-fivers, we were driven to create something together. At 36 and 43-years old, respectively, we were beyond creating babies. Besides, we came into our relationship with a perfect daughter each. Mine was 13 and his, twenty-three. Both blonde, bright, and beautiful and his came with a bonus, a baby! I came into the relationship with a condo that needed no work. He had a work-in-progress in the woods, actually two. We would spend our lives together redesigning and improving these "cabins in the woods". But, before that we took an afternoon cutting down young alders to use to make a trellis. Working together, we .wove supple, young branches into a nine-foot tall trellis with two hearts stacked one atop the other. We were in the gooey, sickeningly sweet, first months of love, forging a new life together. Here we are seventeen years later, separated by circumstance, through no fault of our own. I live in a hospice faci...

Tuesday

Tuesday is shaping up to be my best day of the week. Every day holds the requisite eating, changing, television, and napping. But Tuesday, I got a glorious, hot bath in a handicap-accessible bathtub with my Angela and Lisa, reorganized my shower caddy with my Lisa, read "The White Album" by Joan Didion with my Lindsey, "supervised" doughnut-making and sampled same with my Sandra among others, and listened to Ryan Feng play classical piano. A new book fell into my lap today. Of course, I mean that figuratively. "Play It As It Lays" by Joan Didion was just laying on top of the informal Bailey Boushay House library cart, so I borrowed it. .Guess what we'll be reading? I feel very blessed!