Yes, I have been M.I.A. It's been a week I didn't expect. It's been a time in my life when I had to be available, I had to cover for people, I had to step up, I had to step away... I had to use my acting skills, Chief has told me for years what a great actress I am, and then on occasion, he has told me that I should have shut it down and kept my mouth closed.
I work part-time wearing a lot of hats. The majority of what I do is keep books and records. I do this for my dad at his law office, I do it for my husband and father-in-law for their family farming and ranching operations, and I do it for our family personally. It sounds simple, but when you consider different entities under all of those areas, it is somewhat time consuming. All these jobs have been flexible. If I am up late at night and really rolling on a project, I can keep going and finish it. If I am leaving town for a few days, I can prepare things early and send them out. It's likely been the ideal scenario for a girl who wants to improve her golf game and travel.
This week started out rough as a continuation of last week unfolded. I knew one of my co-workers, Ruthie, hadn't been feeling well. She had a doctor's appointment the previous Thursday in a large town with big hospitals, and I had been summoned to help cover at Dad's office. The appointment turned into a heart cath procedure, which turned into two stents, which turned into those failing, and then an immediate open heart surgery. After the procedure had taken about 3 hours longer than it should have, the surgeon came out with the initial report that the surgery hadn't been as successful as they hoped. With a strong family history of heart disease, they found much of the same bad stuff in her own heart. My dad was out of town. Yikes. She had worked as his legal assistant for nearly 45 years; he was going to need to know about this.
So I am home, and it is still late that Thursday night. I had talked to Dad, who was in a place that made him difficult to contact. Her husband, Lonnie, was talking to me on the phone, and he was alone. After a few phone conversations with him, about midnight, I jumped in my car and headed that way. I knew I was closer in proximity than his kids were, so I knew I could get there for just a little moral support.
Did I mention they are my next door neighbors?
The short version of the story is that Ruthie had extensive damage and blockage in and around her heart. Her sons arrived, and I left. The next few days would tell, but a recovery would be long and challenging. After a yo-yo weekend of trying to wean her off medicines and machines, only to have to put some back into use, it became an intense series of experiments to see what she and her heart could do and what they could not. There would be tiny improvements and glimmers of hope, only to be followed by a new series of test results or drops in levels. We were able to see her and talk to her. At one point when she was not on a ventilator, she was able to communicate with us. It was a bit reassuring to know that she recognized we were there. My dad was able to get within mileage range where I could go pick him up, and we went to the hospital on Sunday. She was struggling. It was hard. They had to go back to the ventilator. Monday, after more of the same, her heart couldn't do it anymore. Early evening, I got the call that she didn't make it.
It is very surreal. A week before, she was working and not complaining about a thing, although we knew she had pain. This is a person that I had known since moving to our little town when I was six years old. Ruthie was a person who was my boss, a mentor, a sounding board -- and she was tough. She was the kind of person who you thought could handle anything, because that's what she did. She dealt with it. In Dad's office, it didn't matter how an error was made, where it came from, or who had to fix it -- we just did it. That's what she told us to do. Deal with it.
We had this small raccoon on a clip in the office. I saw it the other day, and I had kind of forgotten about it because it hadn't moved in a while. But back in the day when Dad had 6-7 employees, and he was the only attorney, things moved at a very fast pace. The people that worked for him nearly all had outside legal training and education. They were capable of taking his automated dictations and producing documents and pleadings as fast as he could tell them what to do. This speed and attention to detail sometimes caused one of the assistants to be a little stressed. When someone in the office was under a great deal of pressure, that raccoon mysteriously got clipped on a basket or the telephone on their desk. It was a signal to everyone else that they should tread lightly near that person, because they were considered to be "in a tree." Dad was not immune. I saw it clipped in his office on more than one occasion.
Friends and co-workers were talking the other day, and they were telling me about how she would sometimes handle her stress. They said she would walk through the office singing, "Zip A Dee Doo Dah"..... Everyone seemed to know about it but me. (I told you I was part-time.) There are probably a lot of other things I missed, also. Even though I was part-time, even though I called myself, "the B team," I worked in the office with her off and on while my kids were at home and, I was in the office and working with her for over 37 years. She made my job easy, because I knew I was never on my own. I knew she was reviewing everything. I understood that she was way more informed and knowledgeable than I was. And I always liked playing second fiddle. I was comfortable with that. I'm not feeling very comfortable right now.
But if she were here, I know exactly what she would say. In her bold and confident voice, she would tell me to, "Deal with it." And so I will.
