“Now to find the tea” I yelled to my grandma. “How strong do you like it?” I asked her. “Moderate to strong” she replied with certain confidence as if It were something I should have known. I poured the tea and let it sit too steep.
“Don’t let me forget about it” I told her as I walked into the living room. We talked about her knitting projects for a while then we got into her life.
She then started on about her life and her work.
-“So are you getting the feel for why hospice is such a special place?” “Yeah” -“Now I heard this again and again from hospice people who worked there, If you’re not meant to work there you won’t, you see what mean? Every once and a while someone will come to work there and they’ll leave fairly soon, people aren’t even drawn there if they aren’t meant to be there, there’s just some kinda set of whatever about the person that they fit well.” “And you felt like you had that?” -“well I didn’t know I had it ahead of time, I knew I wanted to work at hospice but I didn’t know I had that.”
"What were you thinking about before hospice, what were you thinking about doing in college?"
-“oh in college wow, that was a long time ago.” “When you were in college were you planning to work at hospice?” -“well well, the other thing is that mostly people who work at hospice are older and have a lot of life experience….. and occasionally a young person will work in hospice but it’s very unusual. And it’s that life experience and who they are that makes them good at it. So no I didn’t even think about hospice until I was in my 50’s.”
"So what did you do before hospice?" -“ well the very first job after your grandpa Jerry and I divorced was in my late 30’s I worked in health planning loved that.” “Health planning really?” -“ Yes! I loved that job. If we were to have universal healthcare… then the government would have to establish health planning, because it was based on community need not on corporate need, do you see what I’m saying, so that I I was the planner.” “So what did that entail, you were the, not a secretary, right?” -“ No absolutely the opposite of that, I was the person who, we had to develop a community wide health program, and it was supposed to be based on the needs of that area, and so, I did all the researching and writing for it and then I worked with the committees, and the committees were 51% consumer 49% providers, and all those people came together with different skills and knowledge, and then I did all the research and then wrote up sections and then read it and sent it to them.” “Oh really, that’s really cool!” -“Oh it was incredibly cool” “ I had no idea any that was a part of your life. I thought you just did hospice.” -”Oh no. It was I think of all my jobs that was probably the most infatuating, very exciting, in fact, in fact, one of the coolest, so, so that health plan was supposed to be used to determine health services within a certain limited area, one was a new hospital couldn’t come in and build without going through our review process, so we actually turned down a giant hospital corporation, we had attorneys we had meetings we had everything, and it was all based on my plan!” “Whoa, it’s weird to see you as this whole other person.”
I went to go check the tea, leaving my grandma to stew.