“I taught special ed students in a junior high school in the
Bronx. I was a little crazy, but I loved those kids. One day, a kid came in,
angry, and slammed keys down in front of me. ‘What are you crazy Mrs. Pembroke?
You left your keys in your car! You can’t do that in this neighborhood!’ He was
really angry. I said to him, ‘How’d she drive?’ and he said, ‘Like a
charm.”
May Lynn’s laugh broke into her face, her blue eyes bright
behind orange and red reading glasses, her well-worn laugh wrinkles deepening,
a delighted mouth wide open, long teeth and all. “I haven’t thought of that
story in a long time,” she told me. “I loved those kids, and they knew it.”
Actually, May Lynn told me that story last week. And each
week before. No matter. I love hearing it and sharing in her joy each time.
May Lynn is 87 years old, almost 88. She was born on Oct 29,
1929, the day the stock market crashed, and she’ll be quick to tell you, “It
wasn’t my fault. I may have been the result, but I was not the cause.”
On my favorite days at this assisted living facility, I get
to spend time writing with May Lynn. Last week, she wore a purple and blue
scarf over her pink shirt. She wore a blue wool sweater to scare away the cold,
as elders often do. Before she started writing, she read over what she’d
written before. Her writing delighted her.
As she read back over her own writing from our previous
sessions together, she sometimes laughed and then read aloud. Once she stopped
to sing a song about Anne Boleyn, King Henry’s beheaded wife. May Lynn’s big green eyes shone jauntily as
she sang. She sang the whole song, acting out the lines about how hard it is
for Anne Boleyn to blow her nose, because she’s carrying her head in the crook
of her arm. May Lynn crooks her arm and widens her eyes as she sings:
Along the
draughty corridors,
For miles
and miles she goes.
She often
catches cold, poor thing,
It's cold
there when it blows.
And it's
awfully awkward for the Queen,
To have
to blow her nose,
With her
head tucked underneath her arm.
“I don’t know why I remember that song,” she said, “but I
think it’s funny.” Then May Lynn rummaged under the seat on her walker, found a
kleenex, and blew her nose.
May Lynn is funny, amusing in an intellectual way, and she
believes God has a sense of humor, too. “Look at me!” she said by way of
explanation. And then, as if I needed more evidence, she said, “Look at you!”
She and I have had our losses, but we love to laugh. We
believe in a God with a sense of humor and delight. And we tend to walk on the
sunny side of the street, she using her walker and me with my cane.
Though she walks on the sunny side of the street, she’s not
all giggles. Often she’s philosophical about life, her life, the nature of God,
and the importance of forgiveness.
She continued reading. “Oh, I must change this date,” she
said about the date on writing from earlier this month.
“No,” I told her. “That’s right. That was the date the last
time we wrote together. That’s different than today.”
She looked at me hard. She hunched over her writing. Her
eyes were wide and un-blinking; then they narrowed. I could tell she was trying
to decide whether or not to believe me. Finally, she nodded, left the date as
it was, and continued reading.
Sometimes she looked up and was able to continue because she
knew much of what was written. “Forgiveness” is her mantra. “It is the end of
separation between you and me.” Sometimes she read the word “crap” amongst her
philosophizing, and she always stopped and laughed.
At one point, she said she wanted to know about me: “I’m
asking you to ask Jesus what he wants you to do and to share it with me. That’s
communication. That’s important.”
I told her I preferred to listen rather than to talk, so she
nodded and continued. I asked her what she believed. She continued reading
aloud.
“I am only here to be truly helpful, to represent the one
who sent me and to do what he or she or it or whatever sent me to do....I am
here to represent he who sent me. That’s poor grammar. I’ve got to fix that. It
should be him. Him includes her. I don’t like the ‘him’ but that’s out of my
hands.” For a few moments, May Lynn works quietly, correcting the things she’s
written. She began reading aloud again, in a hushed voice, trying to make
sense of my handwriting from a day when she talked and I did the writing.
“What does this mean? She asked me. ‘Waiting for "Harrigan"?
“Oh,” I said. I remembered the allusion to Waiting for Godot that amused us both but decided not to bring it up. “That was the day you were trying to remember a song where the name was spelled out, and it finally came to you: Harrigan.”
She nodded and began to sing: “H, A, double-R, I, G, A, N spells Harrigan. Harrigan.”
She finished the song, laughed and then continued reading.
“What is your most strongly held belief? I believe there is one God, a he she or it, but not a they." She looked up over her glass and explained," A board of gods is like the board at a company that’s gone bankrupt. Somebody said that. God is the spin of the world, the light of the stars…God is whatever is…" She looked up as she thought about it, "observable, no…visible, no… just is.”
“The unexamined life is not worth living…I don’t remember who said that, but it’s a good mantra. Suppose I were an earthworm, burrowing in the mud for pleasure like I did as a kid. …”
May Lynn’s thoughts went on until my phone’s alarm told me that it was time to go for the day. A caregiver in a blue polo and kaki pants stopped to greet her. “Madeline, “ the caregiver said.
May Lynn had told me previously the story of her name. Her mom had intended to name her “May Lynn” but her mom was drugged after giving birth, and the doctor misunderstood her mom’s slurred speech, recording her name on her birth certificate as “Madeline.” May Lynn kept the official name “Madeline” and now invites those she trusts to call her May Lynn. Quite clever for someone with memory loss: she knows whom she trusts.
More than a year ago, the day I met May Lynn, we were doing a memory activity where she read a poem aloud. We both loved the poem and talked about it. At the end of our session, she had planned to go to a lecture but instead went outside to enjoy the lovely moment we’d just had. As she left, she said to me, “Call me, May Lynn.”
Lovely.
