PINKY: IN MEMORIAM

    On 2:53 AM, March 24, 2022, Pinky Conklin was relieved of the chronic pain that had bedeviled her most of her life. She was 79 years old. I was only with her a few short years, 3 of them where she was reasonably ambulatory, but we had some fun together. When we started our relationship she was living with one of her sons and his wife in Prineville, Oregon. She was 8 blocks from a senior center, but had no public transport to get her there and she walked unstably with a cane. I thought she could get better treatment in Portland, she was trying to get hip replacement, but I lived on my little 27' Bayliner cruiser. I was living the dream I had held in my mind for some four decades. I did not think she could handle the rigors of marina life, but my purchase of the boat, and the necessary costs of maintaining a boat were taxing my resources. 

     For a while she was able to live with a relative in Tigard. We joined the Tigard Senior Center and she had people to talk with outside of her family, and me. But her room in their small house was on the second floor and they had four dogs of varying sizes. All of them indoor  dogs. I watched her carefully when we would spend an evening together on my boat. She could walk up and down the ramp at first. It was an effort, but not too taxing. Getting on and off of the boat was another area where I paid particular attention. The shower and bathroom facilities were another area of effort but she could use them. I went with her to keep a watch on her safety. She seemed to grow stronger by these exertions. Finally I invited her to live full time on the boat. The boat was named Dixie Girl by the former owner, but I have issues with things below the Mason-Dixon line, especially anything having to do with glorifying Dixie. It's supposed to be bad luck to change the name of a boat, and it would have required re-registration at the Marine board so I never changed the name and don't use the name. Pinky thought that was funny. She thought a lot of things i did were funny. A typical morning in the marina would involve me getting up around 6 AM, when the first geese could be heard, and writing for a while. Pinky would arise around 10 AM, we would walk to the marina shower and bathroom for our morning ritual. On Monday and Thursday we would go to the Tigard senior center so she could socialize. We stayed for lunch. On the way home we would stop off at Costco or Fred Meyer to shop or, if shopping was not a need we would stop at a local pub for a beverage. A pint of craft beer for me, Pepsi for Pinky. In the summer months we would go to Sellwood park

 in the early evening to listen to music. We looked forward to the Cathedral Park jazz festival each July, and the Verboort Sausage festival. One day as we were in the Moreland area where she could buy me a birthday present of whiskey, she saw a picture of a cat needing a home at the local veterinarian. We went inside and she asked about the cat. It had found a home, but there was this other cat, a feral cat who was an asymptomatic carrier of feline aids, who needed a home free from other cats. We took Gracey home with us, as well as a bottle of McCarthy's barley whiskey, made in Oregon.

     Gracey spent the first couple months hiding, from us below deck; from aggressive geese, ducks, and the occasional blue heron above deck. At night she would sometimes jump onto us late at night while we lay in our bunk. For whatever reason motivates a cat,  Gracey gravitated towards me more than Pinky. She would emerge to sit next to me on the portside bench as I sat by my laptop or tablet. Pinky would sit across from me on the starboard side. Sometimes reading, sometimes trying to engage me in a conversation as I sat there coaxing my creativity to emerge. These were the closing days when I was proofing my manuscript. She was as anxious as I to see my book in print. I read to her from it a chapter at a time. She clearly enjoyed it. When my brain could no longer stand to look at words I had previously written, I would jump over to Facebook to post little quips or troll a MAGAT. Her term for my Facebook trolling was, "sanding ass". As in sanding ass with 80 grit, rarely a finer grit like 250. 

     My book was published in Feb. 2020, I recieved an order of 36 books a couple weeks later, at nearly the same time as the Covid precautions were instituted. The cardboard box of books sat under the steering wheel inside the cabin. Occasionally one of the denizens of the marina would buy a book from me, but there were no bookstores open, restaurants became outdoor eateries, with the cold spring winds blowing through and the raindrops making their staccato  drops on the viscaleen plastic overhead. It was about this time when Pinky got word that her scheduled hip replacement was canceled. 

     As the spring progressed, and there were few places outside the marina open to us, we would go for drives, or sit at a park overlooking the Willamette, enjoying the wildlife. It was at about that time that Pinky had the first of several small strokes. Not serious enough to cause partial paralysis, but enough to ignite the fear that we had kept bottled up. At first it presented itself as Pinky waking up in the wee hours talking in a baby voice. We dressed, walked up the ramp, and I drove her to the nearest hospital. We had been trying to find her assisted living prior to the Covid precautions, but gave up. We started over, working with Multnomah County to find an open room. It was also at this time that she graduated to a walker. We would turn it around and I pushed her to the bathroom or shower, or to the base of the ramp. A marina consists of floating walkways and the sections rarely fit smoothly together. I would stop, she would stand, and we would move to the next segment. By July of that year we had found an assisted living center with the help of her caseworker. We were interviewed on Zoom by two of the executives of Laurelhurst village, an Avameer property. Avameer is an arm of the Catholic church and we were grateful for their existence.

     We went shopping for a comfortable bed for her with electric back and knee adjustments. Pinky was barely 5' tall so the knee adjustments did not accommodate me comfortably. Otherwise it was more comfortable than my forward berth on the boat. Ispent most days at Laurelhurst with Pinky, properly masked as I checked in to the front desk. We would go for drives, have lunch at a pub or restaurant then back to Laurelhurst. During the Labor Day fires we drove all the way to Cascade Locks seeking fresher air. Sometime later she needed supplemental oxygen. One tank lasted about 3 hours, so we had to make our drives fit in that time frame. When we were together in her tiny apartment I would read to her, sometimes from my book, sometimes from books written by more recognizable writers, and sometimes I would share with her a pithy reposte written to a MAGAt on Facebook. 

     One day we had gone to her doctor's for a regular checkup and were on our way back to have a bite at a brew-pub that we liked. We were talking in the car as I drove and I asked her a question. She couldn't respond. I pulled over to the side of the road to check her grip to see if this was another stroke, then called Laurelhurst to tell them I was taking her to a hospital. They told me they would have a medical team there to take her to the hospital. This ended up like her other strokes to be short-lived with no lasting physical damage, but they were growing more frequent. Shortly thereafter, we had to curtail our road trips. By September of 2021 the nursing staff told me that she was transitioning and that she may not have much time left. Her doctor prescribed hospice care. I called one of her sons to let him know. He began spending weekends in Linton on his fishing boat so he could spend evenings at Pinky's bedside. As fall turned to winter, she slept a lot. She was now bedbound, not even able to walk to the toilet. Hospice was there twice each week to check on her care, and keep her in bladder-control pants. By March I was feeding her lunch, what lunch she could eat. When I left her on the afternoon of March 23rd, after Murray, her son, had arrived I knew her time was close. She died with Murray in the room and a hospice nurse in attendance. I was called by the nursing staff early the next morning shortly after she had been pronounced dead. 

     There is a pink rose I planted at Laurelhurst. It is a climbing rose so I bought a metal support for Pinky's rose. Whenever I'm in Portland I visit her rose. I'm glad we had the time we had. It was my privilege to be there for her.