Doctor Hanson

     Page Twenty-Nine.
     My mother's best friend was named Virginia. This blog isn't about her. It's about Doctor Hanson. He was my very first elder-care client. The reason I bring up Virgina is because she was sort of like my grandmother. I helped her a great deal around her apartment and running errands and so forth. From her I learned the concept of "companionship" as it relates to aiding the elderly. But she wasn't a client in any sense of the word. She was family. She merely prepped me for the profession.
     Summer, '82 is when I passed out flyers looking for clients, the first time. This is a separate story for another time, but it's how I met Dr. Hanson. One of my responses came from a woman who lived in one of the very large homes on Fairmount Blvd. here in Cleveland Heights. She had an ex-husband who lived over near Shaker Square. He was a retired surgeon who was ill and needed help. She wanted to know if I was interested. Of course I was.
     For the next three years, I helped him, usually twice a week, in the afternoons. We ran errands then we'd go back to his place. I'd make dinner and we'd sit, eat and chat. He died in '85 from his heart condition. He wasn't old, perhaps mid-sixties somewhere.
     In spite of a very successful career in surgery and a loving family with four kids he wasn't really a happy man. He had a history with alcohol which wasn't resolved. Many people though he was sober through A.A. but he wasn't. I watched him drink. He was also very concerned over the health of his mother, much more than over his own health which was, in fact, far worse than hers. In fact, he minimized his own illnesses. He had a very large ulcer on his foot which he refused to take care of. One day he said to me, "it's not that bad. It isn't like you can see bone or anything." Maybe I couldn't see bone, but I sure saw stuff  I shouldn't have. It was really large and deep. He also needlessly worried about money, to the point that the last six or eight months of his life he took to calling me only occasionally to save cash. But he had enough of it, believe you me.
     It was a very valuable and positive relationship to me, though. He mostly was very nice, kind and helpful. At one point he even put me up for a few weeks 'cause I was waiting to move into a new place. He lent me his car on numerous occasions and always took me out for my birthday. He took his frustrations out on me only once, and it was a really bad scene. But he apologized quickly.
     I was getting ready to quit my day job at Salon: Alpha-Omega and move out of town. The night prior to my last day at work he informed me that I'd need to help him out the next day. He wanted to fly home to see his mother and needed me to take him to the airport. I couldn't 'because I was booked solid at work doing hair, again, on my last day in Cleveland. He went ballistic with particularly cruel verbage. I didn't budge. Fifteen minutes later he apologized after calling his sister. She laid into him apparently and he showed sincere remorse.
     That was really the only hiccup in our relationship. That was when I realized how angry he had to have been at his own life. I've always assumed that those few moments must've been similar to what his kids might have experienced growing up.
     His ex-wife called me at work when he died. I went to the funeral and was struck by the lack of grief his family expressed. Well, they had to have been expecting it and they certainly knew how miserable he was in his illness. I think they thought, "now he's out of his misery". That is where some people go when their loved one dies. 
     Dr. Hanson was in my life for only a few years, thirty years ago. But here I am remembering him vividly. Isn't that amazing? We never can predict the long-term effect others will have on us or we on them. We never know when or how a single little act, positive or negative, will change a life. I hope I distribute positive ones more than negative. I think I do. (Please forgive me. I'm sounding a little like John-Boy crossed with Doogie Howser here.)