Aunt Jeanine
Once the nurses opened the locked door, we searched for Aunt Jeanine.
The kids were interested in the place. "Is this an apartment building?" one of the boys asked.
“Kind of like an apartment,” I said. “It’s a place where people can stay if they can’t live on their own any longer - sometimes when they are older. Maybe their minds aren’t working quite right so they lock the doors to keep them safe.”
My answer satisfied them. As my husband, kids and I walked past rooms in the Alzheimer unit, we were greeted by an older woman, who was walking the halls. She stared openly at my 8-year-old for a few minutes, before saying, “Oh, you are the most beautiful boy.” My shy son squirmed, embarrassed, as she repeated herself several times.
He was rescued when a nurse noticed us, asking if we were the relatives who had called about visiting Jeanine. She escorted us to a small room where we were joined by Jeanine, who looked a bit thin but otherwise healthy.
During our hour-long visit, though, it was easy to see how else she had changed. She talked in some detail about when she was young like my children, but then once insisted that she was not a twin. Later, she would remember, “Oh, I guess I am a twin – to Jim. Now are you one of Jim’s children?” I am, I told her. She knew that when she was herself.
I didn’t see Aunt Jeanine real frequently as a child because she was often based far away from her home state of Iowa, where she was born in 1934 near the small town of Fonda. Jeanine was a nun. We were as likely to call her Sister Jeanine as Aunt Jeanine.
When I was a young child, I remember her coming to visit from what then seemed like a far-away exotic place – the Bahamas. She lived in the Bahamas for many years, and helped start and run a school called Mary Star of the Sea Catholic School.
Sister Jeanine could always make people laugh.
As a teen, I remember being amused by how my then-middle-aged aunt would discuss with my sisters and I how "hot" Tom Cruise was. With moments like this, I was reminded how she didn’t fit the stereotype of the oh-so-serious Roman Catholic nun. But she was like so many other nuns when it came to sacrifice. She spent her life teaching and caring for others, following the path she’d been drawn to as a young woman, always putting others first.
As she grew older, she and one of her sisters - my aunt who became a widow years earlier - became roommates in a house in Arizona. They were nearly always together. When Jeanine began showing signs of Alzheimers and eventually had to move back to her mother house where she could be cared for properly, the separation was difficult for them both.
Aunt Jeanine would call my dad’s cell phone repeatedly as the weeks passed, sometimes a dozen times a day. Always, her pleas were the same: “I have to get out of here. I need to go home. I need to see Mom.” But her mother and father had died many decades earlier. The Fonda farmhouse in which they had grown up was long since gone.
As we visited with her last summer at the convent’s nursing home, she told me the same thing: “I need to go home. I need to see Mom.”
As I talked with Jeanine, my three children played with some toys that had been left in the visiting room. Often, the kids would stop playing to watch the half dozen parakeets that were kept in a large glass cage in the room.
Last month, Aunt Jeanine died.
I told my Mom and one of my sisters about these birds as we drove home from the funeral. I remembered what Aunt Jeanine had said about the parakeets, as my son watched them: “Yeah, they are pretty, but I can’t help but feel bad for them being locked in here. They should be free.”
It felt like she was talking about herself when she talked about those birds, I told them. In a way, she was trapped by the Alzheimers. She had yearned to be free too.
A nun talked during Jeanine’s funeral about how Jeanine seemed to know her time was near. All this made me think about where Jeanine was wanting to escape to. I'd made the assumption that, in asking for her mother, she planned to go look for her at a long-since-gone childhood home in Fonda.
Perhaps she had said only that she needed to go see Mom. Perhaps she hadn't meant Fonda at all.
The kids were interested in the place. "Is this an apartment building?" one of the boys asked.
“Kind of like an apartment,” I said. “It’s a place where people can stay if they can’t live on their own any longer - sometimes when they are older. Maybe their minds aren’t working quite right so they lock the doors to keep them safe.”
My answer satisfied them. As my husband, kids and I walked past rooms in the Alzheimer unit, we were greeted by an older woman, who was walking the halls. She stared openly at my 8-year-old for a few minutes, before saying, “Oh, you are the most beautiful boy.” My shy son squirmed, embarrassed, as she repeated herself several times.
He was rescued when a nurse noticed us, asking if we were the relatives who had called about visiting Jeanine. She escorted us to a small room where we were joined by Jeanine, who looked a bit thin but otherwise healthy.
During our hour-long visit, though, it was easy to see how else she had changed. She talked in some detail about when she was young like my children, but then once insisted that she was not a twin. Later, she would remember, “Oh, I guess I am a twin – to Jim. Now are you one of Jim’s children?” I am, I told her. She knew that when she was herself.
I didn’t see Aunt Jeanine real frequently as a child because she was often based far away from her home state of Iowa, where she was born in 1934 near the small town of Fonda. Jeanine was a nun. We were as likely to call her Sister Jeanine as Aunt Jeanine.
When I was a young child, I remember her coming to visit from what then seemed like a far-away exotic place – the Bahamas. She lived in the Bahamas for many years, and helped start and run a school called Mary Star of the Sea Catholic School.
Sister Jeanine could always make people laugh.
As a teen, I remember being amused by how my then-middle-aged aunt would discuss with my sisters and I how "hot" Tom Cruise was. With moments like this, I was reminded how she didn’t fit the stereotype of the oh-so-serious Roman Catholic nun. But she was like so many other nuns when it came to sacrifice. She spent her life teaching and caring for others, following the path she’d been drawn to as a young woman, always putting others first.
As she grew older, she and one of her sisters - my aunt who became a widow years earlier - became roommates in a house in Arizona. They were nearly always together. When Jeanine began showing signs of Alzheimers and eventually had to move back to her mother house where she could be cared for properly, the separation was difficult for them both.
Aunt Jeanine would call my dad’s cell phone repeatedly as the weeks passed, sometimes a dozen times a day. Always, her pleas were the same: “I have to get out of here. I need to go home. I need to see Mom.” But her mother and father had died many decades earlier. The Fonda farmhouse in which they had grown up was long since gone.
As we visited with her last summer at the convent’s nursing home, she told me the same thing: “I need to go home. I need to see Mom.”
As I talked with Jeanine, my three children played with some toys that had been left in the visiting room. Often, the kids would stop playing to watch the half dozen parakeets that were kept in a large glass cage in the room.
Last month, Aunt Jeanine died.
I told my Mom and one of my sisters about these birds as we drove home from the funeral. I remembered what Aunt Jeanine had said about the parakeets, as my son watched them: “Yeah, they are pretty, but I can’t help but feel bad for them being locked in here. They should be free.”
It felt like she was talking about herself when she talked about those birds, I told them. In a way, she was trapped by the Alzheimers. She had yearned to be free too.
A nun talked during Jeanine’s funeral about how Jeanine seemed to know her time was near. All this made me think about where Jeanine was wanting to escape to. I'd made the assumption that, in asking for her mother, she planned to go look for her at a long-since-gone childhood home in Fonda.
Perhaps she had said only that she needed to go see Mom. Perhaps she hadn't meant Fonda at all.
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