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The Company of Others:
Stories of Belonging
by Sandra Shields and David Campion
183 pages, paperback
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An excerpt from The Company of Others:
Betty Terbasket has lived in the embrace of the hills of Blind Creek Ranch since she came here as a young bride seventy years ago. She was born just up the road, and around these parts of the southern Okanagan, people call her Grandma or Auntie Betty, even if they’re not related.
Betty lost her first child to pneumonia during a winter when the valley was snowed in, then she and her husband raised eight children on Blind Creek Ranch. After her husband passed away, she watched their grandchildren grow up and start families of their own. Many of them live nearby. Her sons come for coffee in the morning. Her great-grandchildren arrive after school and, like their parents before them, eat sandwiches at the kitchen table.
The family say Betty is the one who brings them together.
Betty had hip surgery a few years ago and came home in a wheelchair. When her memory began to give her trouble, the doctor took her middle daughter Millie aside and suggested that Betty be put into extended care because it was no longer safe for her to live on her own. "She won’t survive," Millie said, and the rest of the family agreed. Now Millie says, "We just knew that if she had to go in a home, she wouldn’t be with us today."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Until Millie asked for help, the rest of the family hadn’t realized that Betty needed someone with her around the clock. Her daughters and granddaughters got together and started what they call the grandma schedule. For several years now, a dozen family members have made Betty a part of their routine, spending time with her on evenings and weekends, watching that she doesn’t forget things on the stove, making sure she takes her pills.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
In Betty’s day, women took care of the house and family and men worked outside and came in to be fed. Two generations, later, her grandsons live in a different world: two of them are on the grandma schedule and a third does backup. Each of them is comfortable taking care of the woman who once took care of them. "The respect doesn’t change," her grandson says.
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