Angels in Alabama

Many different helpers and social workers and hospice people and nurses and bathers helped me and my siblings care for my parents in their final years in Alabama, but two were there the entire time, two angels of mercy and comfort: Vanessa and Constance.

Vanessa was the elder of the two, her years of experience and compassion evident in her sweet smile and easy self-assurance. Constance was my age, which I couldn’t believe, I thought she was in her 20s, with her pink scrubs, multiple piercings, gold teeth, towering hairpieces and sassy attitude.

Dad adored them, these two beautiful women fussing over him 4 hours a day. Once, while the bandages on his foot abscess were being changed, he looked lovingly at mom, seated nearby, and said “I. Looove you. I’ve always. Loved. You.” She didn’t hear him, but the sincerity and affection on his face moved me to tears. Mom was his only love, his companion for nearly 70 years.

A challenge for any long-term health care worker is integrating him-or-herself into the surrounding family dynamic. Constance and Vanessa knew what they were doing, and they were very good at it and didn’t need any direction or instruction. Yet, every few weeks they had to deal with a sibling shift change, each of us with our own ideas about our parents’ care. They would graciously listen to each of us, “Yes, Miss Carol,” “Yes, Mister Chris,” and then go about doing things their own way. Constance clashed a bit with mom, who resented having people take charge of the house and dad’s care. I had to pull mom aside one day and scold her. “For 4 hours a day we get a break, from people we trust completely, is it really important how Constance folds the clothes?” Once while trying to decide on a movie, mom blurted out “I hate Barbara Eden,” her contempt for even magical helpers like genies in bottles perplexingly evident. We all eventually learned to sit back and let them do their jobs, giving us instruction rather than the other way around.

It took me about 20 minutes to change my dad the first time, huffing and puffing, not able to get things lined up, my poor dad rolling this way and that. “You’re. Working. Very. Hard,” my dad observed. “Well, you changed a lot of diapers, with 7 kids, I’m happy to repay the favor,” I said, drenched in sweat. He replied, haltingly, “I. Never. Changed. Your. Diaper.”

Under Constance’s tutelage, I was able to change his diaper and the sheets in 3 minutes.

On one of my visits, around election time, I dealt with Alabama’s byzantine absentee voter ballot restrictions, wanting my parents’ votes to be counted. Doug Jones was running for the Senate seat left open by departing Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, who vacated the office to become US Attorney General under President Trump. Jones ran against a far-right fundamentalist homophobe white nationalist, Roy Moore. Doug Jones had prosecuted two KKK terrorists who in 1963 bombed the 16th Street Baptist church in Birmingham, killing 4 little girls. Jones won the election, with a scant 50% of the vote. Moore, who had been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with teenagers (he preyed on girls at the Gadsden Mall back when my brother Mark and I spent weekends pacing the mall with our junior high buddies!) received 48% of the vote. Vanessa and Constance were also eager to get their votes in, and indeed, the turnout of women of color was one of the decisive factors in Jones’ victory. In Constance’s neighborhood, physical roadblocks were erected and detours created, making it difficult to get to the correct polling place, which had also at the last minute been changed without advanced notification.

Doug Jones was eventually unseated, 3 years after taking office, by football hero Tommy Tuberville, who went on to join Republican nationalists in trying to overturn President Biden’s lawful election. Tuberville was elected by a 20% margin, the football player chosen over the civil rights hero .

Vanessa and Constance are my heroes, not only for the love and support that they gave my parents and my family, but for trying to make change where change doesn’t come with any degree of swiftness.