Just breathe...
She was the woman who stayed with me when Grandma’s dance card got too full, …
… the woman who taught me to knit and embroider, to bake cookies and take tea, and to curtsy to the queen if I ever came into contact with her.
She was the woman who taught me that chocolate couldn’t heal heartache but it “sure as heck couldn’t hurt.”
Viola Mills. It was such a lyrical name, so well suited to this spirited little woman. Even when I was small, I thought she was small. She reminded me of a hummingbird, quick and alert and seemingly fragile. Yet she had a feisty nature, betrayed by violet eyes that danced when she laughed.
She laughed a little too long and a little too hard by most standards, as if just as tickled by her own joy as she was by the joke. Secretly, we envied it.
Life wasn’t always easy for her; in fact, sometimes it was downright awful. But she never let on. It was a policy she had, of making the most of the moment, of never being the one to contribute to her own discomfort.
Viola gave up driving in her mid-90s, two years after she bought a brand new Honda with a sunroof to take advantage of the clear light. But after a “little surgery” slowed her down, she finally acquiesced to the need for help and moved into a lovely residential care facility in Carmel. But she told everyone it was merely a means to jump-start her social life.
She hired a reputable attorney to manage her affairs and rented out her house with the caveat that she keep her shiny car in the garage. Then, she “propositioned” the young man she often met at her mailbox to pick her up in that car every Saturday, take her on a lunch date, and then spirit her around town to see “how things were progressing.” He did.
She loved to check on the tide and the state of the sand at Carmel Beach, to witness the changing seasons via the vineyards in the valley, and to have lunch in the sun at the Oak Deli.
On a recent afternoon visit, she told me she had been to Africa the night before. I wrongly assumed delirium was setting in until she invited me to linger in her tiny room and wander through her photo albums of early trips to Kenya. “You’ve got to live a life full of adventures while you can,” she said. “It is your memories of that life that will keep you vital once the walls start closing in.”
On a sunny afternoon in January, Viola told her caregiver she was having a hard time catching her breath and thought she’d like to go to sleep. They heard it as a warning and called 9-1-1. After four paramedics arrived and administered oxygen, Viola’s caregiver asked if she was breathing more easily.
“I have four handsome men giving me air,” she said. “What do you think?”
Although they found nothing wrong, once Viola began admiring the beauty of a fifth man who wasn’t there, they decided she should go to the hospital for observation.
She rode out the door on a stretcher, waving to the other residents as though she were the queen of the homecoming parade. “You’ll be fine, Viola,” said the caregiver. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I don’t think so,” Viola replied with a wink.
And there at the hospital in the early hours of the following morning, Viola snuck out on her own terms, leaving everyone she knew with memories of mirth. She would have been 101 this April. 