Originally published by Evergreen Newspapers
The folks at Mount Evans couldn’t long endure their calling’s intense emotional rigors if they weren’t compassionate by nature.
A nurse, social worker or volunteer may attend an ailing patient for years, spending countless hours in their home, easing their hurts, seeing to their comfort, listening to stories of better days, and, too often, quietly marking the course of their final decline. Professional interest inevitably becomes friendship, which blossoms into much deeper affection.
“You become a part of their family,” explains certified nursing assistant Brenda Barrett, a Mount Evans mainstay for 27 years. “And it’s like you adopt them into your own family, too.”
In many cases the caregiver’s adopted family includes a beloved pet. While caregivers are under no legal obligation to care for a patient’s pet, they may come to feel a strong personal one: You do for family.
“I once buried a client’s dog for her. She adored that dog, and it meant a lot to her that it had a real burial. There was just nobody else to do it.
“It’s not just a pet to them,” Barrett says. “Near the end, it can be their closest, dearest companion, and they worry a lot about what will happen to it after they die.
About 18 years ago, Barrett entered the home of a Buffalo Creek client for the first time.
“Her cat was sitting on her tray table when I walked in, eating breakfast off of her plate,” Barrett smiles. “It was an old, fat, gray shorthair. It never meowed, it just made this awful croaking noise. I worked with that woman for more than four years, and when the end got close she became really concerned about what would happen to her cat. Her family wouldn’t take it because they wanted to travel, and she was heartbroken that it would probably wind up in the pound. I mean, who wants a 12-year-old cat?
“It was very upsetting for her, so I said ‘I’ll take it.’ I’m not really a cat-person – they’re too independent for me – but I figured it only had a couple of years left, anyway. It lived to be 26. I had it for a whole other life. The last week of its life it lived on my bed. I fed it with an eye-dropper. I’m still not a cat-person, but I did love that cat.”
For the record, Barrett is a bird-person.
“I had a pair of peach-faced love birds, and I had a conure parrot named Chili. He was kind of bite-y.”
A long while back, Barrett took on a new client named Mary, an ailing 83-year-old Floridian who’s family brought her to Evergreen so she could spend her last days among kin.
“She could be cantankerous, and she was definitely spunky, and very independent,” Barrett recalls. “Her nickname was ‘Casino Kate’ because she used to coerce her family into taking her to Blackhawk.”
Along with a lively spirit, Mary brought with her to Evergreen a 15-year-old grey conure parrot named Misty. Painted in shades of slate and ash, Misty had bright yellow eyes and a companionable gift of gab.
“That bird was her whole life,” says Barrett. “The day before Mary died her daughter asked me if I knew anyone who wanted a bird. It took me about 30 seconds to say ‘I’ll take her.’ Then I immediately thought ‘What did I just do?’ Parrots can live to be 75 or 100 years old. I basically made a lifetime commitment.”
Then again, Barrett’s life’s work is an exercise in commitment. After making that somewhat hasty promise, Barrett broke the good news to Mary.
“She was failing rather quickly, but I think she was afraid to go because she was worried Misty would end up in a shelter. When I told her that Misty would have a good home with me, she was so happy, and so relieved. It felt good that I could give her that peace.”
It took Barrett’s dog, Baby, a little while to warm up to the household’s new chatterbox.
“Misty can bark like three different dogs, and that bothered Baby at first.”
But pup and parrot are fast friends, now, or at least respectful cohabitants, and these days Misty reserves most of her verbal tricks for Barrett.
“She beeps like the stove timer, and she creaks like a squeaky door opening. And if I sleep a little late in the morning she’ll say ‘peekaboo!’ until I wake up.”
Misty also has more conventional manners of expression. “It’s not going to rain,” Misty will announce, regardless of observable weather. “I can talk. Can you fly?” And Misty can be indelicate. “Ya’ gonna’ go poopy? Go poopy!”
“I’m trying to change ‘Go poopy’ to ‘Go Broncos’,” winces Barrett.
And always, Misty is a poignant, sometimes even uncanny reminder of a feisty woman long since departed.
“Misty laughs like Mary, and coughs like Mary,” Barrett says.
And, every now and then, Misty asks, “Where are you, Mary?”
