Those Daily Acts of Love
A Stroke Patient’s Devoted Wife
The walker's slow rhythmic progress halts in front of your chair.
"Excuse me," says the lady, looking concerned. "Can you tell me how to get to PI6-5755?"
"That's a phone number," you tell her gently. A light comes on behind her face.
"Oh yes," she says. "It is. Of course it is. Thank you very much."
You are at the meeting of the hallways of the west wing of the Ashland Convalescent Center, sitting between two stroke patients. On your right is Floyd Norman, 82, paralyzed on one side and for the past two years restricted to a vocabulary of one word: No.
"No no no no no no," he tells you with the approximate conversational cadence of "How are you this morning?"
"Fine," you smile and take his hand.
To your left is Campbell Bauer, a former post office employee who had his stroke about the same time as Norman. Bauer's inert right hand has drawn up into a fist and as he sits he uses his good hand to pilot it around the formica tabletop attached to his chair.
When he first came, the nurses restrained him, convinced he would wear the skin away. He became so violent they decided to let him continue. He sits now, thick skinned and contented, making circles with his fist like a child playing with a toy truck. He keeps up a running commentary on the action.
"Hey! Hey! Ten a ten ten going to the store good work done fie fie dog fie he ten. . .Hey! Hey!"
The words are clearer after his wife comes and puts his teeth in. But they still don't make sense.
Mrs. Bauer usually arrives at 10:30.
"No! No!" says Norman, smiling happily in greeting.
"Hello Floyd," she says, and takes his hand.
A moment later she is bending beside Campbell, kissing him on the cheek.
"How are you today, my dear?"
A small miracle: the word stream stops. Campbell raises his head from his study of the table.
"Lovely," he says. A moment later it's gone: the fist circling, the words flowing. . .
Mrs. Bauer visits five days a week. Campbell's sisters, who work, split the off days between them so that someone is always there.
She brings him things, treats like homemade sweet potato pie and honeydew melon. She also walks him, shaves him, cleans his teeth and his glasses--all the things the aides would do, but with her own special touch. He's never thanked her. He can't.
"But I know he appreciates it," she will tell you.
They met before World War II when Campbell was a fireman at the station beside her East End beauty salon on Church Hill. They married and Campbell went off to war. When he came back he got a job with the post office and they moved to her present home in Hanover. They liked living in the country. He kept hunting dogs, they had a garden . . . Mrs. Bauer is still proud of her garden, even though she spends less time on it now.
But even with her garden exercise and all that running back and forth to Ashland she finds it difficult to sleep.
"It seems like everything that comes down the road wakes me up, sometimes four or five times a night."
The rate at the nursing home has just gone up. The Veteran's Administration stopped Campbell's benefits last May. They're not wealthy people, and she can't keep him at home. She tried to shortly after he had his stroke but the 24-hour nursing was too much for her. Not to mention the fact that Campbell occasionally becomes unmanageable, striking and kicking out at whoever's near. He's a small- framed man, shockingly strong for his size.
"Come on, Campbell, let's take a walk."
She replaces the shoe which for some reason he had removed, detaches the table, and helps him up. They start off down the hall, she holding his arm, he holding his fist. They walk straight until he tries to enter one of the private rooms. She guides him away.
"Where are you off to?" you ask.
"I don't know," she says over her shoulder. "He doesn't know where he's going."
Wherever it is she'll be there with him, helping him as much as possible, a daily example of love in action.