Mrs. Jackson and I have been through a lot together.
I learned a lot from her and enjoy seeing her. I first got to know her when I started in St. Henri.
Bob, the doctor from whom I had bought the practice, carefully transferred the couple to me. In 1986, it was Mr. Jackson who was the great concern at that time. He was suffering from scleroderma. This is a horrible autoimmune disease where the body attacks its own tissue as foreign and the tissues are slowly replaced by scar. It leaves the patients unable to move. Mr. Jackson had the most serious form of the disease, where the lungs are the primary target. His lungs were being changed into fibrous sacs by his own misguided immune system. He was slowly being strangled to death. When I took over the practice, Mr. Jackson was very sick. A few months later, after a stay in the hospital with pneumonia, I went over to do a home visit.
The Jacksons lived in a veteran’s apartment building not far from my office. Mr. Jackson sat in his big armchair where he was tied by his oxygen tank and nasal prongs. His skin was abnormally smooth because of his disease. His breath was harsh and his lips were drawn and blue. I checked his lungs. The sound of his breathing was a lot like listening to someone pop bubble wrap. I called his respiratory specialist. “What should I do for him?” I asked. “I don’t know” said his specialist. “He should be dead in a month or two. There’s not much anyone can do at this point.” With this advice I began to attend to the dying of Mr. Jackson.
I saw Mrs. Jackson frequently. She was stressed and not sleeping much. Listening to her husband gasp and choke beside her was not restful. Her only respite was the hour or two she spent downstairs in the recreation hall of the building, playing cards and smoking cigarette after cigarette. Her blood pressure wasn’t under great control, something I also attributed to stress. Over the next few months, I learned a lot about the history of the Jackson family.
Young Angus Jackson was a soldier in the Canadian Army during the liberation of Holland. He met Alice when she defied her parents and went to a dance at the base. They courted during that heady postwar time. He was Cree from Saskatchewan. Alice was a well brought up Dutch girl with a crown of braids and a bicycle. They fell in love and decided to marry even though they shared fewer than 50 words in a common language. Again, against her parents wishes, she followed him to Canada. They went off to a remote quarter section in rural Saskatchewan.
One of the most touching stories I ever heard was Mrs. Jackson describe her first birth. She had seven children in all and the first was born on that remote farm. It was the middle of winter. Angus left to get help. He got caught in a storm. Alice was all alone. She laboured for hours alone and in pain. She told me she was so innocent and ignorant she had no idea where the baby would come out. When her waters broke, she thought she had wet herself. When the baby started to emerge she was hanging onto the head of the iron bedstead, screaming. Her first reaction was total surprise when the dark-haired head emerged from between her legs. By the time Angus returned with help she had delivered the baby and placenta. “Look, you have a son,” she said as he walked in the door.
They lived through good times and bad with seven children to bring them joy and trouble. Sometimes they had no money, sometimes Angus drank too much but somehow the incandescent flame of love which had started in Holland became the warmth of a family. They survived together, but not for much longer now.
Angus was fading even as he held tenaciously to life. It was tougher and tougher to drag air in and out of his stiff lungs. Despite the prediction of the respirologist, he was still alive after four months. I tried to get him to write a will, but he had a superstition about making one. “Just write me a letter,” I begged him. “Just write me, saying that you want to leave everything to your wife.” But I don’t think he ever did.
Alice would come to my office every two weeks or so. I would play with her blood pressure medication, listen to her troubles and let her cry. One day she came in with a numb, cold left hand. When I examined her there was no radial pulse. Her subclavian artery was blocked. I sent her up to the hospital. They did some tests and wanted to admit her but she insisted on going home because she couldn’t leave Angus and he refused to go back into the hospital. “If they ever get me back in there,” he said, “I’ll never walk out again. I want to die here in my own home, in my own chair.” She recovered, leaving just a slight weakness in that hand and a diminished pulse in that arm.
Angus continued to fade, Alice was exhausted and thin. I tried to persuade her to take him into hospital for respite care, so she could get some rest. “We’ve been together for 40 years,” she said. “I’ll not leave him now.”
I did persuade her to call her children and ask for the help which her pride had prevented her from doing. The daughters and sons living in Montreal began to spend time at the apartment, allowing Alice a little rest. One morning, just as I came into work, I got the call. It was Mrs. Jackson. “Can you come right away, he looks awful bad.” I grabbed my home visit bag and ran over. When I got there her neighbours were waiting for me in the lobby. They escorted me upstairs in an oddly formal way. As I got out of the elevator they hung back. I knocked on the door. Mrs. Jackson opened it, her face convulsed with sorrow. “He’s gone Perle, Gus is gone.” I entered the neat apartment filled with the memorabilia of 40 years of married life. Angus was sitting in his chair and he was indeed dead. I made the formal examination of his heart and breathing. I closed his mouth and eyes and removed his oxygen. I turned to Mrs. Jackson and shook my head. “He’s gone Alice.” She cried harshly and I held onto her. The friends slowly began to come into the apartment. They started phoning the right people: her children, the Last Post, an organization which cares for the burial of veterans. Someone made tea. Her son and daughter burst running through the door and stopped suddenly as they realized they were too late. I filled in a death certificate. Angus had gotten his wish, he had died in his own home in his own chair. Alice had fulfilled her promise to him. She completed their life together with love, honour and fidelity.