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PAST ISSUES

     She looks at the living room walls covered in family photos, of people smiling, hugging, and she grins. Her family so dear to her is always in her thoughts yet there is a look of sadness and longing in her blue eyes.

     "All of a sudden forever had an end," this is what Wanda tells me as she describes the time when she lost her parents. In four months and three weeks to the day she had lost both her father and her mother. October 10, 1999 and again on March 3, 2000 Wanda's life and the lives of her children changed forever due to the deaths of Alice and Byron Downing.

     "The idea of going forward without my parents scared me, and that did make me feel like their little girl again," Wanda says. She had spent a year and a half caring for her parents, watching the people that had raised her and her children get sick, battle cancer, and eventually lose the battle.

     Her father Byron (Bob) Downing was a fighter. She told a story of when he'd go to the hospital to have his chemotherapy treatment and the next day he would be outside stacking wood so the family would have heat for the winter. "He was unstoppable," Wanda said. Bob had been battling cancer for as long as Wanda could remember. He fought throat cancer, bladder cancer three different times, spinal stenosis, and finally lung cancer. "Don't worry about it, I'm going to be fine, I'm going to live until I'm done living, and then I'll be done." This is what Bob used to tell his family when they worried about his illness.

     "My grandpa was my best friend," Wanda's daughter Paige said. Even now, years later, she cries when she thinks of him. "I remember he had been in the hospital, in the ICU for almost a month, and I hadn't been allowed to see him. I told my mother and my grandmother that I was worried about him, and I wanted to know he was ok. They came back from the hospital late one night, and my mom handed me a piece of paper. I unfolded it, and saw 'I’m feeling good Page' written on it," she laughs at the thought of his terrible handwriting and that he had spelled her name wrong on the note. "My grandfather had been in the ICU for a month, he was hooked up to a feeding tube, and had just a tracheotomy put in to help him breath. He could barely speak, but he made it a point to write me a note so I would know he was ok. That was my grandpa though, he was my best friend."

     Paige remembers the day her grandfather died, "My mom, my sister and I were at our house playing cards with some friends. My mom's an EMT so she has a radio at the house. We heard the tones go off and the dispatcher said there was a sixty-five year old man at 314 VT Rt 110 ( her grandparent's address) who was not breathing. My mom ran into her room grabbed her radio and ran out the door. My sister and I waited for hours at our house. I remember I kept pacing around the living room. I heard the phone ring, and jumped up to grab it. I said hello, even though I knew it was my mother. My mom said 'grandpa’s gone.' That's it. That's all she said. I hung up the phone, just as my sister was coming up the stairs. My sister Tara just stared at me. All I could manage to say was 'Grandpa's dead.' That was the hardest thing I've ever had to tell anyone."

     Alice Downing, Wanda's mom, was the epitome of an independent woman. "Strong, smart, understanding, and a good listener" is how Wanda describes her mother. She was diagnosed with cancer just two days before Bob died. At the time of his death he still didn't know she was sick, she hadn't yet told her family because she didn't want to worry them. On Valentine's Day Alice, Wanda, and Paige made the forty-five minute drive to the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth Hospital where Alice went for her medical appointments. Paige sat in the waiting room all afternoon. When her mother and grandmother stepped out of the examining room she knew something was wrong. "I never thought my grandmother was going to die, she was always so tough, I just never thought of her as being capable of dying." The doctor had just told Alice and Wanda that there was nothing more they could do. Alice had made the decision to stop treatments, and spend the time she had left with her family.

     March 3, 2000, three weeks after Alice decided to stop her treatments. Wanda woke early that morning, as she did every day. She started the water for coffee, let the dogs out, and went in to check on Alice. Alice had been unconscious for several days. The chemotherapy she had gone through had reduced the 5'10", 160 pound woman into a frail 70 pound version of her former self. Most of her hair had fallen out, and she had been on oxygen full time for the past couple of weeks. "I went in and she was lying on her side, I knew I should have turned her, because she had been in that position all night, but she just looked so comfortable, she was laying in her favorite position, so I decided to leave her for a little bit." Wanda went into the sewing room and began work on a quilt. About an hour later, she went back into the living room, where Alice's hospital bed was set up, to check on her mother. She stared at her for several minutes, and saw that Alice wasn't breathing. She looked at her mother's thin face, and knew her mom had just passed away. "Having to call Karen (Wanda's best friend) and tell her gram was gone, because I knew I had run out of tomorrows," Wanda says this was the most difficult part of her mom's death.

     Paige remembers that day as well. It was the weekend, so she woke up at 9 o'clock or so. She and her sister were both walking down the stairs and saw Wanda standing at the bottom looking up at them. When the two girls got to the bottom of the stairs Wanda looked at them and said, "Gram passed away this morning, the funeral home is coming in a little bit to get her." Paige tells me that she didn't cry when she heard the news. "I was just glad it was over. My grandmother had been so sick for so long, and I just didn't want to see her in pain anymore."

     It's been seven years since Wanda and Paige lost Bob and Alice. Paige remembers how much her grandparents were loved by all their friends, "My grandparents' house was kind of like Grand Central for me and my siblings, all of our friends, and all of my grandparents' friends. There was always so much love in that house," she says with a smile. Both Wanda and Paige tell me the story of Alice's funeral. A friend of the family had gotten up to speak and said, "There will be a hole in the center of Chelsea that Bob and Alice used to fill." It was time in their lives filled with sadness and grief. But both Wanda and Paige look back on that time and see how their sadness had become strength to keep their family together, their grief had become the way they had all learned to appreciate the time they had with one another. The deaths of these two remarkable people would become the way Wanda and her kids would find strength to get through all the difficult times ahead.