Client’s Quips Kept Diane Smiling
The 97-year-old Home Instead® client trusted CAREGiver Diane Jordan with his life, and he expressed it nearly every time a shift ended. Using an idiom with equal parts of jesting and seriousness, the client would tell Diane, “I’m betting on you. You won’t lose.” Just as often, his final parting words were, “Thank you for all of your help. You had better come back.”
One of the decorated World War II veteran’s present-day heroes was Diane, the February CAREGiver of the Month for Home Instead of Iredell and Alexander Counties in Statesville. The client could see Diane lives the Home Instead® guiding principles of “Build Trust, Take the Lead and Share Your Heart” because the client knew a hero when he saw one. Diane was always ready when he needed her. From 1943 to 1945, he was in the U.S. Army 34th Red Bull Infantry Division, whose battles included Monte Cassino and Anzio Beach in Italy. He earned two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star Medal.
The client, who passed away in early February 2021, loved to drop quips on Diane and her 24/7 team of CAREGivers. Diane was the client’s “third-shift” CAREGiver who started at 10:30 p.m. Home Instead Engagement Coordinator Darla Corah said: “Diane and her client stayed up some nights and talked a lot, especially in his last months as he had his days and nights mixed up.”
During those wee hours, Diane might hear from her client: “I am above ground.” Diane would reply with a thumbs-up gesture and say, “We are both above ground.” Diane added: “I’d ask him in a general sense, ‘What do you need?’ He’d say, ‘Money,’ and then await my response. Once he said, ‘I am going to Hollywood to take Clark Gable’s job.’ I replied, ‘Can I come, too?’ Quotes came out of his mouth you wouldn’t ever expect. That was part of his charm.”
Darla said: “Diane had a great relationship with the client, who everybody just loved. He was always pleasant and the perfect Southern gentleman. We helped his late wife before we began helping him. Home Instead had been with the couple for a total of 13-plus years. Diane was with him for at least three years. It hurts when you lose any client, and we’d been with him or around him so long, it was doubly tough for Diane and other CAREGivers.”
Diane added: “We were shocked when the client’s wife died about three years ago. They had been married for more than 50 years. They were both the same kind of people who had strong fighting spirits and a will to live. The husband was on hospice for the last year. Once, we thought he was almost gone, but he bounced back.
“He had good days and other days when he was confused. I knew he was closer to the end in the last couple of months. He’d call out the name of his brother, who already had passed away. Sometimes he’d try to get out of bed in the middle of the night. I asked, ‘Where are you going?’ and he’d say, ‘I am going to work.’ Sometimes he thought he was in his workplace and wanted to go home. To get him to realize he was home, I’d show him pictures of his family.”
When Diane left on Feb. 3, she told him, “Have a blessed day” as she always did, but his eyes were closed and he did not respond. By the afternoon, he was gone. Diane always has concentrated on providing the best possible care since she started professional senior care in 1988 at an Upstate New York nursing home, but death is a sad inevitability.
“Death is the hard part of the job. I was the family caregiver for my late parents. For mom, I was angry with the doctor’s predictions of her death because of her breast cancer. Mom was a fighter. If she was suffering, you would never know it. She wanted to go back to work even when it was Stage 4. I’d see her in a good place mentally, not struggling at all. But the end came suddenly. My brother said Mom had a smile on her face when she died Aug. 30, 2000,” Diane recalled. Family and friends tell Diane that she has the same beautiful smile that her mother had.
“God gave us 10 years with Dad after Mom died. Dad, who was a mechanic for 40 to 50 years, was well-known in our Flushing, New York, neighborhood. I was a daddy’s girl. I haven’t had the experience of seeing my Home Instead clients in the same light as I saw my parents, and maybe my clients are more like grandparents.”
Diane joined Home Instead in November 2016. “From being a PCA in Upstate New York until the present time, helping others has been in the fabric of my life. I was drawn back into senior care after I moved to North Carolina on June 23, 2002. I tried retail and other things. I always come back to health care. My best friend kept asking me to come to Home Instead,” she said.
“While I hold my clients in high regard, I want to credit their family members. The military veteran had quite a son. When his mother was alive, the son checked on both. As the dad went downhill, the son came to live with him. The son made himself available to help during the third shift, and I took him up only once. I admire the son, and I told him so. He worked and took care of his parents. His dad was very proud of him and made a point of telling him that in front of me. His son did a beautiful job. These are beautiful people, and I am glad to have known them.”
All Home Instead CAREGivers are screened, trained, bonded and insured. For inquiries about employment, please call (704) 924-9909 or apply online. For further information about Home Instead, visit our website.
