A Real Life Story by Glenn Hansen
Dedicated to Sweet Judith, wherever you are in God’s universe.
CHAPTER 4
I first met Judy when she moved into my apartment building at the end of the previous summer. She was in a wheelchair and needed oxygen, but I had no idea, and I don’t think she did either, as to how unwell she already was. She was very determined to get well and believed she would. So did I.
Judy was very well liked by everyone at the apartment building I lived in. Her caring essence, warm approachability and thoughtful intelligence made her very special. We were all drawn to her as we recognized she was a shining star in God’s universe.
We clicked from the very beginning. It started with four of us playing Scrabble. She was pretty good. I hadn’t played Scrabble in years, but it was nice to play in such a friendly group. While Judy herself could not partake from the occasional bottle of wine we sometimes shared, it added, dare I say, to the sophistication of the event. Okay, probably not, but we had fun.
Our friendship progressed very rapidly. It wasn’t a romantic relationship. We just connected on a very profound level. We were both creative types and for the first time in my adult life, with the exception of my son, someone really understood what I was about as an artist and encouraged me in my various artistic pursuits, especially the music, which was most important to me. She too was very talented artistically, especially when it came to her illustrations. I would watch her do an illustration and marvel how easily and gracefully it flowed from her hand. I was grateful I could return the encouragement.
We started to go outside two and even three times a day to talk about the arts, and then got into world perspectives, spiritualism, relationships and how people should be much kinder, helpful and compassionate toward each other. We wished people would help each other to achieve their goals instead of embracing the virulent aspects of human behaviour. Is this even possible? I refuse to give up on this hope, while acknowledging it’s not likely. We need to seek this though so that humanity does not totally self destruct. Can we do it? That’s the massive challenge we face. This, of course, is where spiritual beliefs come into play. For both of us, love is a key spiritual factor.
Our relationship flourished on this basis for about five weeks. Then, a health event intervened. In the middle of the night in early fall Judy called for an ambulance. Her back was causing her much discomfort and she was taken to a nearby hospital. I learned of this the next morning and immediately headed for the hospital to see what was happening.
It turned out she had two cracked vertebrae in her back. Thinking this was the only issue, I told her I would come and visit her every day at the nearby hospital. We figured she would be there for no more than two weeks. As it turned out, other health issues started to surface and two weeks turned into a month, then two months and finally it was over five months. Judy was becoming increasingly ill as time went on. This is when we learned that her cancer was no longer in remission. It was much more serious than I ever realized.
I had still been seeing her every day, and given the turn of events, more determined than ever to be there, but I finally had to take an occasional break. After all this time, I was starting to run out of energy and had to recharge from time to time. I couldn’t let my battery totally run out because then I would be of no good to Judy or the other important people in my life. Taking the occasional break was hard to do because I was so committed, but I understood the big picture.
During this time, at Judy’s request, I became her formal health advocate. I’m not at all an aggressive person, but, I have no problem doing what must be done either, and in this case it included talking honestly with her doctors in the hospital and getting answers about her treatments, care strategies and so on. For the past five months we had been working on getting her back home to her apartment first, then into an assisted living care facility, but neither of these scenarios was ultimately possible due to her worsening condition.
The World According to Glissando 