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Living The Full Life
With Diabetes
My wife Cecilia, though a forty year insulin dependent
diabetic, lived life to the full-
as wife, mother and professional person.
In 1963, we and our four children-ten years old and under-had just returned home from
two years of demanding yet exhilarating
duty for the U.S. State Department’s foreign aid program in Jordan. The bad
news was Cecilia was diagnosed with diabetes. We were stunned.
How Cecilia handled this news taught me much about the
heart, mind and inspirational courage it takes to accept life’s challenges as
though nothing serious had happened. Not yielding to gloominess over the daily
coping with frequent pricking for blood
to get sugar readings, the pinch of insulin needle injections, the irksome dietary rigors, she performed all of this- mother of four teenagers,
busy professional woman, loving helpmate
- without complaint
or change in her usual sunny disposition.
She had over the years taken graduate courses, taught
school, became Chair of events for the U.S. State Department’s
Foreign Student Service Council, edited its Newsletter, conducted luncheons with top diplomats, including wives
of Secretaries of State and Treasury,
often speaking before these groups. At her behest our four teen agers were
pressed to dress up and attend foreign student receptions. We entertained many of these people as well
as neighbors in our home in Potomac. Whatever the duty or occasion, Cecilia
kept her diabetes routine to herself; except for family and close neighbors,
few ever knew about it. Her bright disposition and attitude toward living
remained a beacon of optimism.
When I decided to return to Academe and our New England
roots on Buzzard’s Bay, Cecilia segued with ease-
family in tow- into
a new set of activities. Her early post college experience as a radio announcer
in Lewiston, Maine and Ann Arbor Michigan had prepared her well for any job
calling for public relations skills. She
took on a job for a large Department Store chain with outlets in Dartmouth,
Worcester Mass. and New London, Connecticut, selling scarves and scarf pens. Using her velvet voice
and gesturing out to eager women audiences, she artfully wove her fingers
around the clips and scarves to pitch sales of the product. Her education and flair for reaching out to
personnel and the public then led her into banking, as Assistant Marketing
Director and then Branch Manager. To prepare for these duties, she took
rigorous training seminars at a Banking Institute on Cape Cod, driving an hour
plus daily for a month, then writing long papers pertaining to the techniques
and strategies of the trade. While on
this job, with her editorial skills (honed earlier as Editor of School/ College papers), she formatted both
the Bank’s Newsletter and the area’s
Chamber of Commerce Bulletin. My sabbatical in l988
to direct a Business School in London lured Cecilia away from her ten
year stint at the bank with the irresistible prospect of living in England for a year .
Despite coping with periodic angina pains, her Boston physicians declared it
non-threatening and with appropriate prescriptions and London doctors
identified, urged her to enjoy the adventure without fear. I often worried more about her welfare
regarding these travel choices than she did!
In her mind, it was yet another foreign adventure dream come true. The diabetes regimen, the angina? She felt no qualms whatever about this
decision.
Mid way through this London experience an American friend
and her daughter proposed a trip to Rome to attend the canonization of St.
Philippine Duchesne, an American Saint. They would pick up Cecilia in London.
Could she handle this without me there to attend her needs? I typically checked
her during the nights, in particular, when reads, diet intake and injections
become an important balancing act to avoid reactions during sleeping hours. For Cecilia, not to worry. They went, they had
a great time, no problems, they came back full of lively tales of the ceremony,
of Rome, who they met, where and what they ate.
Cecilia looked fine and happy in the hubris of having taken on the
challenge. I felt pride in her joie de
vivre.
Our year in this adventure involved many miles of walking
the streets of London, often on university business, trips to Shakespeare’s
Stratford-on-Avon, to Oxford, to Cambridge, to Blenheim Castle, to the
Cotswalds, to Bath, to Canterbury, to Scotland, Edinburgh and St. Andrews. Cecilia’s nitro spray always at the ready for
angina pain; it did not daunt her curiosity to get wherever we set out to
go.
Later, home again, when diabetic retinopathy had taken its
toll on her eyesight, she continued her quest for enlightenment and pleasure: attending her lady’s Mother’s Club, Luncheon
Club, Book Club. Or, sitting in our
kitchen looking up to the ceiling, not knowing whether anyone was about, eyes
closed as she searched and roused her memory to bring back the early years of
poetry memorizing, she would render in dulcet tones, Benet’s Nancy Hanks, Milton,’s ,On His Blindness, Longfellow’s, She was a Phantom of Delight, Noyes’, The
Highwayman, Bowning’s, How Much Do I
Love Thee. Many more. She
even gave a book review before her club ladies:
His Excellency, Joseph Ellis’,
fine biography of George Washington. I read it to her; she memorized my notes. The
ladies told me she did a fabulous review of the book.
Cecilia’s life proved that diabetics, at whatever stage of
the disease that prevails, can live lives as full as one’s aspirations, feelings
and talents will allow. She was a gentle
and serene person who faced the daily problems of diabetes with courage, faith
and optimism right up until passing from my life, just shy of her eightieth
birthday.
Richard J .Ward
20 Pleasant St.
S. Dartmouth, MA 02748
508 992 5554
Author: The Fragrance of Heliotrope: The Presence of Cecilia
Grampas Are For All Seasons
Award Winning Memoirist, 2007
Chancellor Professor Emeritus
University of Massachusetts /Dartmouth
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