On Wednesday, October 24,2001 at about 8 AM Louise suffered a heart attack while in Frye Regional Hospital. She had been admitted on October 15 with a fever of 101, and relatively unresponsive. It was my thought that this was one of her occasional yearly cyst infections, and that a short period of hospitalization would return her to her usual condition. However, it was not to be. After about 9 days, all but 1 being in an intensive care unit, her heart stopped and before the medics could get it beating again she had apparently suffered some brain damage, causing her to be unable to breathe. She was moved to the cardiac care ICU, where her doctor pointed out, as I already knew, that she had executed a living will specifying she did not want to be kept alive on life support machinery. He asked me, Alan and Susan if we wanted to do so, saying that she would not recover, and would have to breathe from that point on through use of a ventilator. Also, continued dialysis would become increasingly ineffective due to congestive heart failure, which for some time had been causing her heart to be unable to pump her blood strongly enough to allow the dialysis to remove enough fluid, which accumulated around her heart and in her legs, ankles and feet. Alan, Susan and I discussed this a few minutes and made the heart-rending decision we would have to let her go, since we believed that was what she would want for herself, and as she had expressed a number of times to me, even insisting that I execute a living will for myself, and take it to my doctor.
Thus ended at the age of 71 ,the life of a beloved wife and mother, who lived most of her time on earth not more than 75 feet from the house in which she grew up from the age of 2. She did get the opportunity to visit her brother, Dean, and his wife Dorothy in Arizona for several weeks one summer with Susan, at which time they caught a bus to California and Disneyland. While they were with Dean, he and Dot took Louise and Susan on a tour of some of the sights to be seen, including the Grand Canyon, and generally treated them like visiting royalty.
And we lived for 2 years in a mobile home in Gastonia while I worked there. She always had the needs of her children and others in mind, and did her best to help them, even during her 15 year ordeal of dialysis. Part of her help was tendered to fellow patients in such things as allowing beginning technicians to gain experience with sticking her with their needles rather than other more queesy patients. And she was asked to talk with new patients and encourage them, which she did gladly for a number of years. When the social workers set up a group of patients, social workers, and technicians to discuss problems and potiential solutions, she was asked to serve, and did, representing patients and their concerns. Even before this occurred, she noticed, and mentioned to social workers any patients who had problems, as she was concerned with their needs.
Since we were partners in life so long, and she did not take the opportunity to record some of her remembrances of her life before our marriage, I will try to tell some of them as she told them to me over the years.....
her father and mother were both working in the hosiery industry when they met and married.... her mother's maiden name was Bass, and her father often joked about the large Bass he had caught ... Louise was born in McDowell County, and they moved first to Newton and then to their house off Sweetwater Road when she was 2 years old....
she remembered her father having to travel to Statesville to his work in an old car with tires in such bad condition he would have to stop and pump them up several times on the way there, and on the way back home after work....
her father could not afford antifreeze for the car in winter, and he would have to drain the water when the car was not in use, and refill it with water when he needed to use it again....
there were 5 children in the family, and money was so tight her father kept a small notebook in which he recorded necessities purchased for the family, and also anything else that was to be purchased with his next check, such as "a pair of shoes for Dorothy" one time, "a coat for Betty" another....
her father was operated on for what was thought at the time to be cancer at a Statesville hospital and a kidney was removed (a no-no in terms of what is known today about polycystic kidneys).... as a result he was bed-ridden and her mother had to quit work to stay home and care for him....Louise remembered her father crying because of his inability to provide for his family, and worring about what might happen to them when he died....she remembered her uncle John Bass buying groceries for the family several times during this period.....she remembered neighbors visiting her father at his home during his illness and his appreciation for their visits....
her father had polycystic kidney disease (which was unknown to them and the doctors at the time), and had to chop wood for heating the house in spite of the hurt he suffered from doing so....he was so proud of being able to buy his house and approximately 8 acres of land on which it sat, that he and his brother-in-law Glenn Bass often walked over it all on Sundays when Glenn and his family came to visit and admired it, and discussed what he might use it for (such as building and operating his own hosiery mill)...
after her father died, she remembered that on Saturdays she and her sister Betty would walk the 2 miles from their home to the bus-stop on highway 70A, catch a bus to town and go pay $10 to the hospital on her father's bill....
she remembered her mother having a sock looping machine installed in her den/bed-room and her mother looping socks from early morning to late night to earn a living for the family (of course Social Security was in effect and they received $11 per month per child up to age 16, a total of $44 per month; Evelyn was over 16 and didn't receive any), and that she sang a lot of the time while working...
Louise remembered that she and Betty had to walk down the road to and Aunt's house to carry back to their home bags of socks brought from the mill to the Aunt's house by their uncle for their mother to loop.... she felt it unfair that the uncle would not drive the short distance from Sweetwater Road to their home and deliver the socks to them, especially since the uncle had rode, at no cost, with their father to his(the uncle's) workplace for a number of years....
her oldest sister Evelyn assumed the duties of mother to the younger children and used a points-earned system to get their help with the house-work....a specific number of points was awarded for each task satisfactorily completed...
she remembered working on weekends while still in high school at Wallace 5 and 10 cents store.... a lot of the time she had no idea what the price of the items she sold was, so she just guessed, and was sure she charged too little many times... in the evenings when she got off from work she depended on an uncle and aunt for transportation home, and when she was late getting off work they had already gone, and she was forced to spend almost all she had made that weekend for a taxi to take her home....
she remembered one very cold winter day with snow on the ground that she and brother Dean missed the bus to high school, and they walked all the way to school on Springs road, a distance of about 5 miles, and when they arrived she was so cold she could hardly stay in her classroom, and was disappointed that her teacher offered no relief, especially because of her wet feet, and it took her so long to get warm....
both her sisters, Evelyn and Dorothy being helped into nurse's training by Dr. Hambrick of Hickory Memorial Hospital, and she herself being given a job and living in the nurses' home at the hospital after graduating high school...
she remembered Dr. Hambrick looking after her as if she was his own daughter, to the extent that when she went home on one weekend without telling him, he drove to her house to determine that she was there and safe (no telephone at her home)....
she did not subscribe to the biblical admonition: "spare the rod and spoil the child"... she felt adults that beat their children were just venting their frustration on those weaker than themselves, because they (the adults) could not or dared not strike out at the true cause of their problem(s)...she never remembered her parents striking herself or her siblings...
she thoroughly enjoyed playing with her cousins when they came to visit, but was amazed that some of them were allowed to talk back to their parents or ignore their instructions...she thought that she and her siblings respected their parents and wanted to obey them rather than question their orders...
she told of an occasion when sister Dot wanted to please their father by hoeing part of the garden... when their father came home from work he asked who hoed the garden and Dot piped up and said "I did!", thinking she would be praised for her initiative...her father said " young lady, you grab a hoe and get right back out there and do it right!"....
she remembered that she and Betty stopped at the local grocery store on the way home from school at times and ordered candy and charged it to her mother's account... she did not know if they had been overcharged and didn't know whether her mother ever realized they were doing this...
she remembered an occasion after her father's death when the principal of high school offered her and brother Dean some work when school ended for the summer... it had to do with book storage for the summer...on another occasion, one of her teachers, who lived directly across the road from the school paid her to baby-sit her son, who was sick in bed...she didn't think of it at the time, but when she became an adult she felt sure these offerings were a kindly attempt to help her family out financially...
she recalled an occasion when a teacher had to be absent from work one day and she was chosen to serve as a substitute and maintain class discipline... she apparently did well, and the teacher she substituted paid her a day's salary, to her amazement...the teacher was Mabel Teague, of Taylorsville, and she and Louise were good friends and sent one another Christmas cards until Louise passed away...
she remembered a neighbor whose wife was sick in bed and who came and asked her mother if Louise could stay with the wife during the day while he worked.... after some thought, Louise's mother agreed, thinking all she would have to do would be stay with the women and not do any particular work... it turned out she was expected to do all the housework, such as cooking, washing, ironing, dish washing , and milk the cow, most of which items Louise had not ever done on a regular basis and some not at all... when Louise went home one day she was asked if she wanted some corn from the garden, and thinking it a gift, she accepted... it turned out that when she was finally paid for her work (very little), a price was deducted for the corn....
Another neighbor sought brother Dean's help in gardening for the summer... he worked the whole summer and was paid 50 cents for his whole summer's work...
Louise and Betty helped brother Dean sell "Grit" newspaper on Saturdays, and he paid them for their help...she was jealous that Dean got to go with their father to get groceries on Saturdays...Dean could go dressed as he was in jeans, whereas she and/or the other girls would have had to change clothes...
she had a great deal of love and respect for her mother for keeping the family together after her father's death... she often said she did not see how her mother did it... she said while they did not have a great deal of money, somehow her mother was able to find some for special occasions such as a new prom dress for Evelyn or Dot...
she admitted a bit of jealousy about some things that had to do with who would get an item when there was only one available...Betty was always given it, because she was the baby...
in accordance with the practice of the times, her neighbors, the Setzers agreed to farm her parents' land, providing all the labor and 2/3s of the fertilizer in return for 2/3s of the produce, and the Ezells provided 1/3 of the fertilizer needed and the land for 1/3 of the produce.... this agreement was carried out for a number of years and together with fruit trees planted by her father helped feed the family....she remembered the Setzer family, including all the children coming down the hill from their home and across the road early in the morning bringing their hoes to work the land....she also remembered when Grover Setzer was small he sometimes sat under her mother's looping machine and caught the socks as they fell off the machine...
she remembered that she and her siblings sometimes played ball in the field in front of the Hermans' house with the Setzer children on Sunday afternoons, and that when it was hot Mr. Setzer would bring a large container of lemonade for all to enjoy, and how good it tasted in the heat of the day...
she remembered being at the Setzer home on several occasions during meal time, and being surprised that they had only one item for the meal, whatever was in season at the time.....just one big bowl filled with green beans, or strawberries or whatever....and the whole family gathered around the table being served that one item....
She recalled that on graduation from high school Dean and Caroll William Flowers went to Washington to work for the FBI in the fingerprint department ... this was during World war II and the FBI had solicited graduating high school students to come to Washington to work ... while there Dean often sent boxes of candy home to his family, and helped buy some of their special occasion clothes.... she remembered some of the Herman family next door insisting before Dean left for Washington that he would have to have some white shirts, so his mother had to make a special effort to get several for him before he left....
She remembered her brother Dean working his way out west by helping pick crops and fruit in season one summer... once he put his wallet under his pillow at night, and it was stolen while he was asleep... it contained all the money he had and he wasn't able to buy any food, so he wired Louise to send him some money... she didn't realize his predicament and waited several days before taking the time to send some... in the meantime he approached a minister of a church about something to eat, and he was sent away without anything.. this understandably reduced his opinion of organized religion.. Dean survived, and managed to work his way back home okay...