Angel Biscuits
Mom being airlifted off of the QM2 by the Canadian Coast Guard. Click here for the video. September 21, 2018..
After a week in the hospital in Newfoundland, where Mom received her terminal diagnosis, she was finally able to go back to NC in an air ambulance.
My first passport photo. 1973. Who knew then that air travel would feature so heavily in Mom’s final days?
Mom with my sister in the nursing unit of Carolina Meadows. We were eventually able to move Mom back to her house to die.
It’s time to tell the story.
I mentioned it in passing in my last post and feel I should finish it. Mom’s final days were VERY dramatic. Of course I can only tell my side and I wasn’t there for some of it, but I’ll do my best. In June of 2018, our extended family was scheduled to take the Queen Mary 2 to England together as we had done for the past few summers. I got a call from Mom the week we were to embark saying that she had to have her gallbladder removed and that they might not be able to make it after all. We were super disappointed but accepting. You can only do what you can do. Well, Mom was not going to be denied a week at sea with her beloved granddaughters! Against most advice, she popped up from that surgery, flew to New York, and wheeled right on the ship. Cheers all around! We thought that the worst was over. It was only beginning.
Mom was pretty tired on the ship and mainly stayed in her cabin. That was to be expected. The surgery was fairly major. Apparently her gallbladder was in terrible shape. Mom slept and hung out with the kids. She was just happy to be there. The ship took us to England where everyone went their separate ways. My daughter and I traveled around Europe for a few weeks. Mom and Dad were doing their usual England residency, they split their summers between London and Cambridge. We would get reports from Dad every now and then that Mom was sleeping an unusual amount but we chalked it up to recovery. Plus, Mom got a horrible recurring GI infection which made things miserable. It sounded like she was able to rally occasionally to see friends or music, but for the most part the summer was a bust.
Mom and Dad loaded up on the QM2 to come back home (I mean, if you have the time and the means, why not?!). Wifi is expensive and shoddy on the high seas, so it was normal for us to not hear from our parents for a while. In fact, it was normal to not hear from them when they weren’t on a ship, they were busy living life to the fullest! I was at a music festival with my family in the remote West Texas desert when I received a message that Mom’s heart had been going nuts on the ship. They were unable to regulate it. (Mom had had trouble with her heart earlier in the year, wearing a monitor for a while, but I don’t think that a firm diagnosis had been issued.) Fearing the worst, the ship Captain decided to steer off course in order to be close enough for the Canadian Coast Guard to evacuate Mom by helicopter to a hospital. That’s all the info I got. It was happening. In all of the chaos, Dad didn’t know where she was going and it wasn’t clear if he could go with her. There’s a harrowing video of Mom being raised in gale force winds taken by Dad, who ultimately wasn’t able to join because there was only room for one extra passenger and they thought it was best to send a nurse along. My poor father had to endure multiple days on the ship, biding his time until he could disembark in New York and try to make his way to Mom. He reports that the QM2 staff was amazing and that Mom’s nurses put on their dress whites and took him to dinner.
Meanwhile, we had no idea where Mom was. We thought she might be in Nova Scotia, someone had mentioned the name St. John’s. I got to work on Google and found a St. John’s hospital in New Brunswick and called them. No Dale Reed. They were kind enough to listen to my ramblings and said that maybe I should try this hospital in Newfoundland. I did and, miraculously, Mom was there. They transferred me to her room and she answered with, “YOU FOUND ME!”. She was chipper and feeling ok. I was immensely relieved. I shared the info with my sister and Dad, it would still be a few days before Dad could get there. I called again the next day and they wouldn’t let me talk to her for some reason. I’m not sure that they denied me, exactly, but I couldn’t get ahold of her. I kept trying and kept getting the same thing. It was getting weird. In hindsight, I think that Mom must have gotten her terminal diagnosis and, perhaps, they didn’t want to bother her? It pains me that she received this information all by herself, but maybe it was for the best so she could process it and not have to put on a brave face for us. Normally, I would have hopped on a plane and just gone there to see what was going on, but I was literally in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately, my sister did just that. She flew across the country from Oakland. I have no idea how many flights and dollars were involved, but I’m sure it was complicated. Mom issued another, “You found me!” when my sister surprised her.
At some point the diagnosis was revealed, perhaps my sister even knew it before she got there, the timeline is hazy for me. I remember receiving a call from Elisabeth telling me that Mom had a very rare and aggressive cancer of the heart and that they were only giving her a few weeks to a few months to live. I was sitting at a baseball game in Marfa when I heard this, so I went to my car and asked to speak with Mom. We had the most beautiful, honest conversation. The year had been tense, we had had a disagreement at Christmas (which was rare for us) and I had been holding a grudge. Well, nothing like the terminal diagnosis of a loved one to put things in perspective! It was unbelievable. It was awful. It was true.
I did more mental math on how I could get to Newfoundland: drive 2 hours to Midland, take a plane to Dallas, then probably a plane to New York, then a plane to …… where the hell is Newfoundland? I felt guilty and landlocked, grateful that my sister was there and my father would be there soon. Unable to do anything useful, I went back to the music festival where Patty Griffin was performing and bawled my eyes out until I decided I should call it a night. If you know Patty’s music then you know that it was perfect for this moment of reckoning.
Dad eventually got off the ship and made his way to remote Newfoundland. I don’t have much info from that time, as I wasn’t there, but I understand that the locals were amazing. Mom was in a shared room and the other patients’ families took in my own, making them toast, giving them rides, doing whatever they could to help. This hospital time (maybe a week?) was spent stabilizing Mom and there was a lot of red tape to deal with in order to get her home. I was involved in that part. I’m a planner and am good with logistics, so I researched and priced air ambulances. It seemed like the only solution. Mom needed medical attention and was too sick to fly commercial. So, if you or your loved ones ever need an air ambulance (and I certainly hope you don’t), talk to me. The flight went well. The plane was an old jet tricked out with hospital equipment. There was just enough room to squeeze my sister and Dad onboard. It sounded cramped and uncomfortable, but the staff was kind and everyone was grateful to JUST GET HOME, something that had been so elusive. I was finally back in Austin and flew to NC, actually beating them to the nursing unit at Carolina Meadows, my parents’ retirement community (they have a really great independent house there). The only complaint we had about the air ambulance experience was that the van driver in NC put in the wrong coordinates and took my family to the wrong freaking place! Dad knew he was going the incorrect way and tried to point it out, but the dude insisted he knew what was up. Who was Dad to argue?! Well, it turns out he should have because a long day became an even longer one. When they finally rolled into the nursing home, Mom waved her fingers at me and said, “What are you doing here?”. You see, she knew I had a big work event I was missing. Honestly, who cares about work when your sick Mom is flying internationally on a gurney?
Once in NC, we got Mom set up with some specialists who confirmed the diagnosis. Mom’s decline happened very quickly. The QM2 airlift was on September 21, Mom died on October 19. We were able to get her home, set up in a hospital bed in their living room with all her pretty things around her (I’m going to include me and my sister as two of those!). Elisabeth and I took turns so that one of us was always there. We had around-the-clock nursing staff with us who were helpful when we needed them and unobtrusive when we didn’t. Mom’s death went as well as it could. That sounds flippant, but it’s not. It was Mom’s final gift to us.
Mom had time to plan her funeral, which was remarkable. I’ll write more about that later. Being such a lover of music, it was a real send off. The final song, played while we buried her ashes, was “Angel Band”, sung by our friend Cassie Webster and accompanied on guitar by our friend Tommy Edwards. It was perfect. Mom’s friend, the Reverend Tambria Lee Brown, performed the homily. I want to share a bit of it.
It begins with:
“Sojourner Truth, the abolitionist and women’s rights activist. was quoted as saying: ‘I am not going to die…. I am going to heaven as a shooting star.’ I could not help but think of Dale’s dramatic rescue from the Queen Mary 2, lifted heavenward by a helicopter. It seemed like an apt metaphor for her remarkable life.”
The homily continues, describing Mom and her life and ends with:
”Into paradise, dear Dale, may the angels lead you…At your coming may the martyrs receive you…. And may the holy city Jerusalem celebrate your return even as you will be there to roll out …and up… the carpet when we come home, too. May you rest in peace, because we know for sure you have gone home like a shooting star and are rising in the glory of the God who loves you and us all ….all of our days in this life and the life to come.”
Thinking of my shooting star angel of a Mom, I’m going to share her recipe for Angel Biscuits today.
ANGEL BISCUITS
1 pkg active dry yeast
2 tbsp warm water (105-115 degrees)
5 cups white Lily self-rising flour
¼ cup sugar
½ tsp baking soda
1 cup shortening
2 cups buttermilk
melted butter
Grease a baking pan with melted butter
Dissolve yeast in warm water. Set aside
Combine flour, sugar, and baking soda together in mixing bowl. With pastry blender or fork, cut in shortening until mixture resembles coarse meal.
Combine buttermilk, and yeast water
Add to flour mixture. Stir with fork until moistened
Turn out onto lightly floured surface
Roll ½ “ thick
Cut with 2” biscuit cutter, dipping cutter into flour between cuts. Do not twist cutter
Place edges together in prepared pan.
Cover with damp cloth and let rise one hour. Dough does not double in size
Bake in preheated 400 degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes, until browned. Brush tops with melted butter while hot.
Makes 30 to 40 biscuits.
AS USUAL, KEEP ME POSTED!
Email and subscription button below.