Death by Morphine

 

Chapter 45

 Death by Morphine

Mariam was a Holocaust survivor.

When Mariam was ten, she and her sister were two of many German Jewish children who were saved by the Kindertransport (1938-1939). They were placed on a train and shipped off to Britain, where they never saw their parents again. 

Dear DD was the caregiver for this lovely lady for a time. Mariam was a mathematician who knew about numbers but didn't know how much money she had and didn't care. It just came to her. She apparently had enough, as she was in a retirement home and had BOUGHT her apartment. On top of that, they charged her $5,000 to stay there and be given care. Plus, she had private caregivers.

DD was her caregiver on the night shift. In the evenings, they would go to the roof and watch the sunset, where Mariam would tell stupid jokes, and they would both laugh.

When Mariam was 16, the school hired her as their Mathematics teacher. From there, she moved to another teaching position and never wondered from where her next job would come. She had mathematical proof in her name that she and DD found reference to on the Internet. 

 She had a fascinating experience with non-repeating patterns. A company wanted a design on their toilet paper, and they decided that Mariam's technique with non-repeating patterns could prevent the pages from sticking together. 

The toilet paper company eventually went out of business, but Mariam kept a few rolls of the paper.  Friends would want some for a keepsake, and she would give them a piece. Sadly, she said, she left the toilet paper rolls behind when she moved from Britain to the U.S.

 Mariam had Multiple sclerosis, a condition she had for years with little effect on her except she was unsteady on her feet, thus the caregivers in case she fell. It was not a terminal illness.

However, hospice killed her.

We view hospice helpers as angels. Many are, some are not. A nurse in charge thought she was in pain and decided she needed morphine; thus, she suggested Hospice care.

Mariam had stated she would rather have pain than be drugged. A doctor on the premises declared her terminal. Her medical advocate held out for a time but eventually bowed to their sage advice and gave permission to place her in hospice. The nurse reassured DD, the caregiver, that they would never give Mariam more morphine than she needed. Her only family was two nieces who lived in Britain. They loved her, but they were reassured by Mariam's living facility that she was being tenderly cared for.

 However, the following day, after being placed in hospice, her bed was gone, replaced with a hospital bed.

"Where's my bed?" Mariam asked.

Mariam didn't know what hospice was. DD tried to explain. "I'm not ready to die," she said, "I don't want hospice."

 DD complained to the staff that Mariam was being over-medicated.

Within days, mouth swabs they use on a dying patient because they can't swallow appeared on her bureau.

Morphine suppresses breathing and can cause anxiety. Thus, patients are given a "cocktail" that contains not only morphine but an anti-anxiety drug that is so powerful it is used in mental institutions to calm out-of-control patients.

DD was home on her day off when Mariam died. But she got the call and has never taken a permanent client since.

After moving to the United States, Mariam visited Britain. Although the orphanage was gone, a tree she remembered from childhood was still there. She photographed it, and it was a cherished picture on her wall.

It was a dreary picture of a lone tree on the horizon of a mound, not something someone would feel worth keeping, but it was a treasure to Mariam.

We don't know what happened to it.

Mariam is loved and remembered by our family--although--I never met her, and now I hope by you. Gone but not forgotten.

 

If you are a writer you might enjoy my other blog, The Best Damn Writer's Blog on the Block.

https://www.bestdamnwritersblog.com/ 

 

 

 

 

Guides for Souls

[[File:Walkyrien by Emil Doepler.jpg|thumb|Walkyrien by Emil Doepler]]

To entertain ourselves while waiting at the DMV, Daughter Dear told me about a Tom Cruise movie she watched last night.  

 

I had never heard of it. What? I missed a Tom Cruise movie? When I looked up Tom Cruise movies, I found I had missed several. However, the one I’m talking about is Valkyrie. 

 

It isn’t a movie I would choose by its title, for I didn’t know what Valkyrie meant. 

It means “choose of the slain” and is typically depicted by a female hero, so I wondered what they were saying. As best I can understand, Valkyries are female figures who guide the souls of fallen warriors into Valhalla, a magnificent hall where fallen warriors live in bliss.

 

Daughter Dear warned me that the movie doesn’t end well, but then we would have known if a Nazi attempt to assassinate Hitler had worked.

 

If the Germans had destroyed the wicked regime from within, it could have changed history. The Germans would have been heroes instead of vanquished. Perhaps the bomb wouldn’t have been dropped, and the Berlin Wall wouldn’t have been built. It was a gallant try. Unfortunately, it failed and is true.

 

So the story goes: 

 

Col. Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) sees that Hitler is about to destroy his country. So with time running out for Germany and the rest of Europe, von Stauffenberg joins a group of like-minded, high-ranking men who want to overthrow the Nazi regime from within, with Col. von Stauffenberg becoming the trigger man in a plot to assassinate the evil dictator.

 

Daughter Dear and I had been discussing how people generally do as they are told, follow directions, and are a part of the herd. However, out of the many come one who rises like cream to the top of milk. Those are to be celebrated.

 

I once read and hoped it was true that a woman walked out of a concentration camp, and no one saw her. I’ve heard stories of a family who escaped Germany in a hot air balloon they built. One a man carried his wife out of Germany in a suitcase. He was a professor who carried books across the border so often that the guards stopped examining his suitcase, and thus he got his wife out. (And he had built up the strength to do it.)

 

I loved hearing a discussion between Oprah Winfrey and Jean Huston where Huston said, “We are made for these times, and we are up to it.” 

 

Let’s prove her right.