Josephine's diagnosis

These things came in so handy
when we lived in student
housing at Luther Seminary.
With a coin operated launderette in the
basement, I wished I had my own
washer and dryer. Now that I have
my own washer and dryer, I wish they
were located closer to my bedroom,
proving that whatever you have,
you always want more. How easily I
forget about the days when I had
to load up the laundry into my car
and haul it all to another building
or even a different town. 

Hello lovely readers, since yesterday's post was pretty brutal and since I am still basking in holiday lollygag, I thought I'd post this story about a sweet and tart woman we knew in seminary, Josephine, particularly about how she was the very first person to diagnose Bob's liver failure, one day while we did laundry together. We've lost track of her and her family, but we still send her all our very best over time and distance. The story is a work in progress. Thanks for coming over to my blog. Cheers!  

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At first, Bob spent a lot of time in bed, as if he had the flu. But he had no flu symptoms, so it was as if he was simply tired, or perhaps depressed. I was one of those people who believed that people could induce depression upon themselves to avoid reality. (I’m not anymore.) Still, I could see no evidence that Bob’s condition was serious unless wanting to sleep all the time was serious, which is how it presented to me at first. The urgent care doctor said he had bronchitis and prescribed antibiotics. The bronchitis wasn’t letting up, so they prescribed more antibiotics. Then they thought he had C. difficile and prescribed steroids.

Bob was an athletic 6’1” man, and not a sickly man. He’d always had a hearty appetite and an active interest in sports. Mostly, I didn’t think about the sleeping as sleeping, I thought about it as avoiding me and the responsibilities of the household, or finding a job that would help support the household. At the time we were living in student housing at Luther Seminary where Bob had graduated with his Master of Divinity degree three months previously. Technically our family was supposed tuo be on our way out of the apartment and off the campus. In fact most of our belongings were packed in boxes for exactly such a move although we had nowhere to go. We were awaiting Bob’s “call,” the process for Lutheran pastors to be matched with a congregation. Another way to see this process is a paying job acquired through a convoluted system of announcements and assignments not unlike the NFL draft process. (Much later, when Bob did receive his call, it actually did somehow transform into a real "call" to me, in a spiritual sense.)

The fact that Bob was not getting a call, or any ideas for a call, or any leads for a call was exploding inside me. My frustration was exasperated by the fact that Bob was in bed sick for over a week, which meant I was doing all the parenting and household tasks myself. I was trying to be a bigger person, but I wasn’t. I was a bitter person. We were on the edge of homelessness, the apartment was in shambles with half-packed boxes, two young children, and no plan. (Amanda was 10 years old and Aidan was seven.) Bob had always been the stalwart housekeeper, washing dishes and mopping floors. He approached housework like he did sports, as a physical outlet; he’d always been pre-disposed to being super on task with daily duties. However, during August of 2006, when he wanted to lay in bed all day and all night, all the duties all fell to me. It sounds trite now as I write about it years later, but I remember our apartment as disheveled as our future together. After Bob graduated in May 2006, things were supposed to come together for our family but instead they were falling apart.  

That also meant the laundry was piling up because Bob was the family launderer. He had a system that I’d learned not to interrupt. Our building had a laundry room in the basement the size of a small commercial launderette. It held a line of coin-fed washers on one side, a line of dryers on the other side, and one sturdy table in the middle, big enough for six people to stand around and fold their washed and dried laundry. At the far end of the room was a broken down TV, dilapidated chairs, and wonky wheeled toys, the looks of a formerly nice space to spend time while waiting for the spin cycles to end. It could be a space for young children cramped in apartments to stretch and play during the long winter months. More and more, it became a space to dry clothes for families who didn’t want to drop quarters into the dryers. Racks were set up and lines were strung for that purpose. I always thought air drying seemed an economical way to manage the laundry, but not Bob. With his rolls of quarters garnered for just this purpose, he used the dryer to its fullest extent, drying everything completely. He didn’t believe in putting up with damp or hard clothing in order to save money. We didn’t have a garage or basement, so it was almost like the laundry room became Bob’s “man cave,” if you will. It was a place for him to escape his studies and do something tactile. He had always felt more comfortable working with his hands instead of sitting at a desk.

Because Bob was usually the one in our family doing the laundry, he was the one who met others in our building who were like-minded about the washing clothes, or at least with the frequency. It was through a quirky laundry room relationship that we were first introduced to the notion, just 10 days into his illness, and after several trips to urgent care, that perhaps there was something wrong with his liver.

Our building housed students and their families from many countries around the world, giving us all occasions to both celebrate and question each other's cultural differences. Oftentimes when Bob returned from the basement laundry room, he would tell me that he bumped into Josephine from Indonesia, who lived on the second floor. Her black shiny straight hair, red lipstick, blue eye shadow, and smooth brown complexion were neatly ordered for every occasion, including washing dirty clothes. She knew the unique personalities of each machine and offered free advice on which ones would waste the most quarters and which ones would get the clothes most clean and most dry. No matter how many times they met in the basement wash room, Josephine was perplexed about my function in the household. “So what does your wife do?” she quizzed him every time.

We all unwittingly violate cross-cultural discretion, mostly without knowing, and one of Josephine’s indiscretions was that she asked a lot of questions, mostly on the topic of domestic roles. I grew up believing that you weren’t supposed to be nosy about other families and the nature of others’ relationships was none of my business. Josephine had no such predisposition. When we planted the community garden in the spring Josephine couldn’t believe that I was turning soil and Bob was not.

“Where is Bob?” she had asked, standing at the edge of my plot, her petite frame perfectly coiffed for manual labor, looking at me with earnest intent waiting for a response.

“He’s washing the dishes,” I said. In fact, he had been at that very moment.

“Bob washes the dishes?” Josephine responded, with the utmost sincerity and curiosity. “And what do you do?”

“I plant the garden.” I had no other way to explain it. We never got the feeling that Josephine was prying into personal matters intentionally. We knew she was simply trying to understand. Oftentimes when Bob returned from the laundry room he had a story about Josephine’s questions and it often made me laugh, not at her, but at her bold curiosity and the way Bob would describe it. I suspected that Josephine adored Bob because he listened to her, returned her questions, and genuinely befriended her. And because she had never met a man before who took laundry so seriously.

One morning about two weeks into Bob’s constant sleeping, kids in school, Bob in bed, I took a break from office work (I worked a nine to five job from home) and made a quick trip to the laundry room with a heaping basket of the kids’ soiled clothing and blankets, still holding out that Bob would improve soon enough to do his own laundry, the way he liked it to be done. I rolled the wheeled basket into the launderette, Josephine was there. Impeccably dressed as always, she folded clothes on the big table.

When Josephine saw me, she instantly knew something was different. She was well aware that Bob did our laundry, not me.

 “Where is Bob?” She cut right to the point. “Did he get a call?”

“He’s not feeling well,” I said.

I wanted to start my three washer loads of stinky clothes and skedaddle. I didn’t want to small talk, which is one of the reasons I had been grateful for Bob’s willingness to do the laundry. He is gifted at chatting with people, anytime, anywhere. I’ve come to learn recently, thanks to my therapist, that I’m extremely left brained, the other side of creative. However, I don’t consider myself as much analytical and logical like left-brainers get credit for, I'm mostly just plain old practical. I look to get things done and check off my list. That morning with Josephine in the launderette, I wanted to get the stuff in the washing machines and get back to my desk. I would not have shared the details of Bob’s physical status, but Josephine was being herself and she asked questions.

“What are his symptoms?” Josephine further inquired.

“He has a bad case of bronchitis,” I said, only because she asked. “He’s sleepy, can’t eat, can’t get out of bed.”

 “It’s the liver,” Josephine said in her sharp, choppy, Indonesian accent. “It will be long time. Six weeks.”

I was astonished by her speedy diagnosis. She was so decided in her analysis that I believed her, yet I didn’t want to believe her because six weeks seemed a lifetime. I was barely surviving ten days of this, added on to three months since Bob’s graduation, and five months since other classmates had received their “calls.” I can’t exactly remember how I responded, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t tell Bob about this meeting with Josephine right away. I didn’t want her to be right, but of course in looking back, she was. Except Bob wouldn’t be sick for six weeks, but six months. At the time I had no idea how petty I was to agonize over ten days. You can do anything in ten days. There’s plenty of people who would say you can do anything in six months. When you’re super practical, like me, stalled time is one of the worst things that can happen, no matter how short.  

Josephine’s two little daughters were not twins but they were named liked twins, Jeffy and Jesse. They looked alike and often dressed as princesses with fluffy blue and pink crinoline miniature gowns shipped from extended family in their home country. Wearing thick eye-glasses that seemed to produce nasally voices, the girls also asked me a lot of questions whenever I saw them in the hallway. They were so cute and, like their mother, so sincere, I tried to slow down in my sensible daily routine to consider their questions: Why are you wearing your pajamas in the daytime? Who does the dishes? When will Bob get better? ~