Byline: Fred LeBrun
I have seen the face of an angel and her name is Alberta.
On the same day I also met a real hero. His name is Hank. Both will be deeply chagrined that I see them for what they are, but I don't come across that many angels or heroes. And it was a little dazzling to see two in one day.
Hank Henderson and his wife, Anna,
live, as they have for many years, in a modest, comfortable home in Colonie, among the crisscross of streets behind Central Avenue. They are, in theory, in sedate retirement. Except that since 1988, when Anna began exhibiting profound symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, Hank quietly embraced a new career: full-time care giver.
Care giver. Such a sanitized term for someone who with loving vigil, day in day out, fulfills the vows spoken nearly a half century ago, in another time when these circumstances were unimaginable. Words inadequate to describe the spirit behind a daily routine without end. The gentleness, the soft-spoken words. Not a hint of complaint, or impatience with a disease that reduces a loved one to a mockery of what she once was. To be in the presence of someone like Hank is to get a little goose bump and have a tear come to the eye.
For a few weeks each year, Hank checks his wife into the VA Hospital. He is a Navy veteran, and she is a Marine Corps veteran. For him, it's a deserved vacation, a needed break, a little time to regenerate, perhaps play a little golf. But by the time the hospital stay is nearing its end, Hank says he's anxious to have his wife home again. He says this, and I believe him.
About noon, five days a week, Alberta Cook shows up at the Hendersons, as she has for years. The routine is unvarying. Preparing lunch, serving it, cleaning up, bathing Anna Henderson and straightening up. An enormous amount gets done in two hours because Alberta pursues her agenda relentlessly.
Alberta is also a care giver, a professional one, although the words again don't remotely do justice to what Alberta is all about, either. From 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. every weekday, she also cares, with equal diligence, for an 86-year-old stroke victim in Albany, an elderly arthritic patient in Delmar, a very old woman in Colonie too fragile to care for herself. Alberta is a home health care aide, for which she receives a basic wage of around $13,000 a year under a contract with the Albany Visiting Nurse Association.
'I made a commitment long ago to take care of those who couldn't take care of themselves,' Alberta explains in a simple, direct, eloquent sentence cloaking a lifetime calling.
Alberta Cook is retiring this week in order to join her husband, who retired as a newspaper circulation driver and now resides in Beaufort, S.C. She is 63 years old and, frankly, not ready to retire. She and her husband have raised four children, all now with successful careers, including a physician and a nurse. More care givers.
The Cooks have stuck together through thick and thin - and after an hour or two with Alberta, it's easy to understand why she would sublimate her desires, no matter how fervent, to the greater family good. That's just Alberta. 'A higher power is looking down,' she says matter-of-factly. 'I'm answering to him.' She says this, and I most certainly believe her.
There are individuals in whose company others are drawn like a powerful magnet. They make noisy people quiet, the vain feel humble. It has nothing to do with education, or the power of words. It has everything to do with a personal radiance, a soul that just bubbles out.
Down in Washington, health care reform hearings are front-page news. We wait, anxiously, to find out what it will all mean and who will pay for it. The discussion is high level, abstract, and about money. We can't get away from the cost.
While it's too early to say where the reform will take us, it's a pretty safe bet that whatever scheme is approved for national health will increasingly incorporate home visits and home care givers.
During the past five years, the Visiting Nurse Association chapters have been growing 20 percent a year in caseload. It makes good sense. Providing nursing home care at a patient's home still prices out at 60 percent of what the same service costs at a nursing home. Hospital care costs nine times more, on average, than home care.
Which means that more and more of us will be where the Hendersons are today. If we are blessed, we will see our duty as Hank has. And if we are twice blessed, we will be graced by an angel's smile.
