Martha's Miracle

(This story starts HERE. This is the last part.)

Martha came home every year for Christmas. I tried to make the visits upbeat and fun. It was always disastrous. She would relive her miserable childhood, dragging her nieces and nephews into it. It seemed like she was determined to have everyone in tears; that’s what Christmas was to her. She arrived in dirty clothes with a suitcase full of dirty laundry for us to wash. Symbolic? Passive aggression ruled. And I was being ludicrous trying to make Christmas perfect for our kids. We would buy Martha's plane ticket, and then resent her for not being grateful enough. I came to dread her arrival.

Our father committed suicide (succeeding where Martha had failed). Martha and I got re-acquainted as adults during the horrific aftermath. We shared some very private things - each of us had thought we were alone, that it had only happened to us - and it was crazy that in this mess we finally felt like real sisters, perhaps for the first time. I noticed that Martha was different, too. Her clothes were clean and stylish. She turned down offers of wine. She said she was in AA. Here's a crime. I pooh poohed it. After a few more disastrous Christmases, we took Martha out to a nice restaurant (sound familiar?) and suggested that maybe Christmas was too emotionally charged of a time for her visit. Maybe she should come during the summers.

I didn't hear from Martha again for sixteen years.

I tried a couple of times to find her. The phone number I had was disconnected. Mail sent to her address was returned, no forwarding information known. Once I even paid $30 to do an Internet search, which only produced the last address and phone number that I already had and didn't work.

I wondered if she were alive.

In March of 2009 I was writing a blog post. A tribute to my dear friend Carolyn (Easy's mom) who had died that morning. My phone rang. Was I Patience? Yes. Did I have a sister Martha? Yes... Oh, God. The kind voice told me that Martha was in the ICU. She had advanced ovarian cancer. They had done an ileostomy. Could I speak to her? No, she's on a ventilator. Would she allow me to visit? Yes. Yes, I think that's a good idea.

That was one of Martha's angels.

During those sixteen years, Martha found a family. Through Alcoholics Anonymous. In Martha's hospital room there was a constant stream of visitors. Sometimes there was a line down the hospital hall because there wasn't enough space in her room to accommodate everyone. And I saw something I had never in my life seen in Martha's eyes: trust. I was incredulous.

She looked at her friends, right in the eye, with trust. Vulnerable, honest, loving trust. And she smiled and she laughed. What was this?

Here are some photos of Martha's Christmases after she stopped coming home.












She's looking into the camera and smiling. Really smiling. Not the grimace I was accustomed to seeing on film.

Martha managed an A.A. facility. She babysat during meetings, babysat for members. Her hospital room was wallpapered with construction paper cards made especially for her by 'her' kids. She loved kids. Of course she was the perfect elf at every annual Christmas party.

She had worked cleaning houses, doing whatever to get by. She had ridden that bike all over Toledo year round. Imagine! Once she had been the victim of a hit and run. "I was in the paper!" she told me. "Cracked my head wide open."

During her illness, her A.A. family stepped up. There were so many angels - I literally can't tell you. Angel Janet, who had made the effort to find me, took the impossible job of getting Martha health coverage. Martha's American birth certificate had been lost. In post 9/11 bureaucracy, getting a birth certificate was impossible. Janet did it. She stopped at no obstacle, even going to the US Senate! Martha's father was a U.S. born and raised citizen who worked for the State Department, and her mother was a nurse from Iowa, for the love of God!

Janet prevailed. Martha, who had been eligible for all kinds of government assistance all of her life, and who had never taken one red penny, finally got Medicaid. Thanks entirely to Janet.

Denial, in A. A. is a bad thing. Martha believed that she was going to survive this cancer. I didn't, but I also saw that denial had to be the only thing that let Martha survive her childhood. Her adulthood. All of those rude stares and averted eyes and paternal disgust? During this last year, my presence brought Martha face to face with all of those crappy memories. We talked a lot about growing up. I felt like my job was to show Martha that I cared about her, that I loved her, to listen and listen and listen, and to make her laugh.

Martha's denial was working. She got to go home. Against all odds, all medical prediction, after 4 + months of hospitals and nursing homes. Her A.A. angels gutted her little rental house. It reeked of cat and cigarette. They tore out carpeting, they scrubbed and painted. Martha got to buy new furniture. (In a freak series of events, Martha found a tiny inheritance she should have gotten decades ago. Now, to get medicaid and SSI, she couldn't have it. Her A.A. angel took her shopping.) "I've never had new furniture," she giggled to me on the phone. "I have good taste, everyone says!"

And now comes Angel Cindi.

Cindi had a medical background. She needed a place to stay. Martha needed a caretaker. She could not be alone. Martha had three tubes draining bodily fluids. She required so much care. And she could be difficult. Being cared for - and perhaps my re-entry into her life - made her revert to some of those old passive aggressive ways. Oh, Cindi! But they talked it out. Only the nurses reading this, or those of you who have cared for a terminally ill person can know the amount of work Cindi did.

Two and a half weeks before Martha died, she was asked to lead a men's A.A. meeting. Martha was so far beyond thrilled: she was deeply touched, she was honored. I asked Cindi on the phone if Martha were strong enough. "She's going to do it," said Cindi. "She's determined."

Here are the photos from that night. (Martha's face is swollen from the steroids that went with her chemo.)

Martha's miracle. The baby deprived of human touch. The Martha who couldn't stand to be hugged. Oh she had a family. Look at her.

During my first visit in the hospital. Martha broke into tears. "I had no idea that so many people cared about me," she cried. "I had no idea."

Cindi, Janet and I were with Martha when she died. I have a picture of Cindi giving Martha a kiss on her forehead that last night. I agonized whether to include that photograph. I decided not to. Martha is in a soft, flannel nightgown. She has oxygen in her nose. She is close enough to death that her eyes appear unseeing. She's lying in her bed, on her side, Cindi leaning over and kissing her gently. The remarkable thing is that you can see Martha puckering her lips - kissing back. Leaning in. Accepting and giving back. Martha, who couldn't.

The next week I returned to Toledo for her service. Janet had helped her arrange everything with that little inheritance she needed to spend. It was held at the facility Martha used to manage. Cindi had set up photographs. Martha's elf costume, her key necklace. There were 200 chairs. Full. People standing. I got the opportunity to thank Martha's real family. And they thanked Martha. How many of them had been helped to find their sobriety. If Martha could get to every meeting riding her bike in Toledo in February, they knew she wasn't going to hear any excuse from them!

If Martha could do it. She was an inspiration. She made a difference in their lives. She was loved and respected.



This was the picture I took of Martha for Obama's healthcare reform website. She was so proud that her story made it. She had worked every day of her life, and never had a nickel's worth of health insurance.

She had the most peaceful death. She had fought it mightily, and in the end she embraced her death with all that courage and infinite grace. Yet another A.A. angel prayed with her. When I arrived, Martha gave me a big smile, focused her eyes back in this world for a moment and held up her arms.

It was an enormous gift.

Martha was the bravest person I know.