Our Visit to Trudy
by Dick Thrall
It was a cool and windy Saturday in May when we flew to New York to visit our long time friend and associate Trudy Wilson Cannon. Trudy was at the Kateri Residence in the upper Westside, a hospice and rehabilitation facility where she had been since her release from the hospital. The operative word had been “rehabilitation” when she arrived there. She hoped and planned to return to her apartment in Queens where she and John had lived for as long as we had known them. As the number of days mounted up, the possibility of returning to the apartment dimmed, though her enthusiasm for life never waned…or if it did she concealed it well.
The Kateri Residence sits at the corner of Riverside Drive and 87th Avenue, where it overlooks the Hudson River. We signed in at the reception desk and were directed to the elevator that would take us to the thirteenth floor, room 1311. This is one of the nicer Manhattan hospices, but I do not expect to see it on the House and Garden channel. We passed some rooms with residents sitting in the hall in wheelchairs. We followed the numbers to 1311. Its solitary occupant was a pleasantly plump brunette lady who was obviously not Trudy. A second empty bed surrounded by flowers and cards told us we were in the right place. We found a nurse who directed us to the Dining Room at the other end of the hall.
Upon entering we found it occupied by some eight to ten people, some ambulatory and some in wheelchairs. I scanned the room but did not see Trudy. When we had last seen her in early February we had been shocked at her frail appearance. Since then she had suffered considerable trauma, capped late in March by collapsing on her apartment floor where she was found by her daughter Connie and rushed to the hospital. She had not been eating and was seriously dehydrated. Only then did we discover that she had been battling cancer for years, keeping it a secret from all but the closest members of her family. She had refused aggressive treatment. The diagnosis was not encouraging, but the IV and hospital diet led to some improvement in her condition. I was hoping to find her looking somewhat stronger than she was in February, although Connie had warned us that she was continuing to lose ground.
Shirley saw her first and greeted her warmly. That caused me to bring my gaze from across the room to the woman in a wheelchair directly in front of me. It took me a moment to accept that it was Trudy. She had “dressed up” for our visit, wearing an attractive, green outfit. Her hair was neatly combed. But there was no fullness to her body anywhere. Her arms and legs were thin as rails. Even the swollen left arm was only slightly larger than her right. She had tried to explain the swollen arm as due to a fall, but it was the result of the cancer’s attack on her left breast and the adjacent lymph nodes. I would have been surprised if she weighed eighty pounds. But as we hugged and kissed, we could see the Trudy we knew and loved smiling and looking at us warmly with her expressive eyes.
Then she reached out toward us and said quietly. “Hello, Kiddo. Well, this is it.” I hesitated, not certain of her exact meaning. Was she telling us that she knew the end was near? Had she accepted the inevitable? My hesitation seemed longer than it was. Shirley didn’t miss a beat. “This is it?” Shirley said incredulously. Trudy’s reply was immediate. She smiled and said, “No of course this isn’t it!” That was the end of any discussion of the serious outlook she was facing. Throughout the rest of our visit she remained upbeat and optimistic.
Trudy asked us to wheel her back to her room. As I had promised, I had called Connie as soon as we had arrived at Kateri. We had just arrived in Trudy’s room when Connie swept into the room. Connie gave us a fast review of the cards and flowers that filled the ledge that ran below two windows. It was an impressive display, but Connie explained that she regularly ran out of room and had taken many of the remembrances home. The staff had told her that Trudy received more flowers and mail than anyone they had ever cared for.
A handsome, clear Lucite desk plaque from the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences commanded the room from its special place at the end of the heating unit opposite the foot of Trudy’s bed. Its inscription was an expression of thanks for all that Trudy had done for their chapter during her long career as National Awards Director.
A second prized possession was a framed photograph of Trudy with her late husband John Cannon. From the background and John’s cap, we thought it was taken during our boat ride on Loch Ness in Scotland. Both of them wore big smiles. What a vital, happy, good looking couple they made. The picture set us off remembering all of the trips they had hosted for the Trustees. Tours of television studios, meetings with heads of state, briefings by our ambassadors and cultural exchanges with the producers, writers and performers of each country’s television had broadened our knowledge of the medium we worked in and loved. Each trip had memorable moments…feasts on local delicacies…songfests that carried on into the night…clowning for the cameras that memorialized the trips...touching moments of parting when trips ended, usually marked by a chorus of Auld Lang Syne.
You could choose the time your visit to Trudy began. Most of the time she would decide when it would end. We had been there just under an hour when she announced that it was time for her to have some time alone. Connie had warned us not to be surprised if we were dismissed. Trudy did as predicted, but in a manner that did not offend. With a slight wave of her hand she announced “You can go now.” It was an experience we shared with most of those who visited her there.
Connie guided us to the nearby subway station while we discussed many of the serious subjects that were carefully avoided during our visit. Connie has been a censor of many comments in letters and cards that strayed too far toward morose expressions of pending doom, fearing that they would cause her mother to become depressed and give up prematurely. Treatment for the disease had been suspended. Now the goal was to make her as comfortable as possible. Medication for the pain frequently left her less alert than she might have been otherwise. It made it difficult for her to concentrate and to find words she wanted to use.
Saturday evening Shirley fell victim to a mixture of pollen and Big Apple pollution, aggravated by a recalcitrant room heater at our hotel that left it several degrees cooler than the passing cold front outside. She spent most of Sunday in bed on a steady diet of antihistamine pills. Late in the day, the symptoms disappeared as suddenly as they had arrived. We started to head toward the Kateri Residence, but stopped short when we realized that visiting hours would end before we could get there. We decided to schedule our return visit on Monday morning. We thought that we had read the sign that said visiting hours began at eight AM. We could easily manage a visit before catching a taxi to LaGuardia Airport.
We arrived at Kateri at nine Monday morning. As we entered the lobby we looked at the visiting hour sign. It said that they began at ten, not eight. Suddenly our casual schedule was threatened. We explained our dilemma to the security officer and begged for an exception to the rule. After consulting with the attendant on the thirteenth floor, he agreed that we could go up, explaining that there would be no staff to assist us if we needed anything. We readily accepted that condition and got into the elevator.
The attendant greeted us as we arrived and started to escort us to 1311 when a nurse stopped us. She had just seen Trudy (who they knew as Gertrude Cannon) head into the dining room. We reversed our course and headed in that direction. We were not facing the shock we had experienced Saturday, and I had no difficulty spotting her. But we were in for a different surprise. Fresh from a night’s sleep and perhaps less medicated, Trudy was far more alert than before. We had provided direction to the conversation on Saturday. Trudy had limited her participation to general responses. Today, she was in full charge. She welcomed us warmly and reviewed her experience at Kateri. She recalled visits from her family, friends and Academy staff members.
She asked us to take her back to her room, where the love fest continued until it was time for us to depart for our flight. This time we were forced to call an end to the visit. “I’m so glad you came to see me.” she smiled as we made our goodbyes. “This has been so good for me.” Then she added “I’m going home tomorrow.”
That or similar remarks had been heard by most of her visitors at Kateri. At first, we had attributed them to the cognitive losses she had suffered as a result of her condition. That Monday morning in May she had been at the top of her game. We linked it with her “Well, Kiddo. This is it.” remark during our first visit and saw a new meaning. She had always been a positive, upbeat person, even when things were crashing down around her. She was avoiding the cliché words and phrases usually reserved for such occasions. They would not fit her. This was one of the ways she was using to say her final goodbyes.
Trudy’s final tomorrow arrived on May 28. She went home that day.
