The Complaint Department

Once upon a time, people took their consumer complaints to a place in a store that was humorously labelled The Complaint Department.  The actual name of that part of the store is Customer Service, which takes away the antagonistic connotation of complaining.  (It's kind of like calling a mental health institution The Loonie Bin, or calling an unwelcome portion of an audience The Peanut Gallery--both of which are now considered wildly insensitive and/or racist--and both of which I now have to strike from my vocabulary, in spite of the fact that I had no clue either weren't at least somewhat acceptable in common parlance.)

In all of my transactions, I don't complain.  I state facts.  I indicate frustrations, but I never blame the employees who are just doing their jobs.  Well...most of the time.  And most of the time, I get satisfaction in whatever transaction I'm trying to remediate.  But who do I complain to when there is no one to blame??

Not so very many years ago (but at least five), I was sitting around my daughter's dining room table in Lindenhurst, IL, with my grandchildren, their mother (my daughter) and stepfather, their father and stepmother, and their paternal grandparents (who are also my friends).  We were just talking, as we all do so well, with the old folks dominating the conversation.  The subject of health came up.  Comments quickly went down the rabbit hole of old age aches and pains.  At one point, it struck my funny bone that we were now participating in the kind of complaining that we, collectively, blamed our own old folks for when we were younger.  I mentioned it.  We all chuckled and changed the subject.  Whew!

Thinking back on that, I have considered my family:

My father did complain about his arthritic knees but only because they gave him trouble whether he was walking or sitting.  After having his knees x-rayed, his doctor declared, sadly, "You don't have any knees left, Mr. Covill".  His knees weren't only osteo-arthrically affected but also bone-on-bone.  I understood that.

My mother was spry in her late 60s, but she would hobble for the first few steps that she took every time she got up from a sitting/lying position.  I asked her why.  She said her feet hurt when she launched into walking.  Her only complaint, ever, was, "It's hell to get old."  If she had other complaints, she never let on.  (I'm pretty sure she had plantar fasciitis, but I didn't even know what that was in those days, until many years later--after her death--when I got it myself.)  I told her she should consult a doctor, but of course she didn't.  Even the day she died, she didn't complain.  She had chest pain but the rest of us weren't informed until it was too late.

My grandmother--oh dear Lord, my grandmother!--was a bastion of strength and stoicism.  She was a proud woman with dignity.  She would never, ever, admit that she was down, even if the ceiling fell in on her.  She'd gather her wits about her and figure out how to get out of the rubble.  Her entire life had been fraught with challenges to her sensibilities.  In her last 15-20 years (late 1960s, early 70s) her health failed.  She couldn't feel her feet and local doctors couldn't do anything for her.  She went to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where they found a benign tumor pressing on her spine.  The tumor was removed but the damage was already done.  She never walked again.  She was in a wheelchair with no control of her bladder.  At first they tried diapers, but those didn't keep her from sitting in her own urine for hours, with only my aging grandfather to help her.  Thereafter, she had a Foley catheter and a urine bag on the side of her wheelchair.  She was seriously diabetic, relying on insulin shots several times a day to get by.  She also had pernicious anemia which would put her into comas until she got a blood transfusion that would bring her around.  In time, she had to be put in a nursing home for the care that her condition required, and she never really accepted it.  I could write a book about this woman--the glue that kept our family together--a woman who loved the farm and did the gardening and wanted nothing more than to be outside where she could see the flowers and hear the bugs humming--living in a wheelchair, and finally a nursing home--with a black gangrenous foot and looking for all the world like a person who was looking death in the face.  And welcomed it.  One of her last comments to my mother (her daughter) as she came out of a coma was, "Why didn't you let me go?"  She was ready to go.  Tired of the fight.
Still, this woman NEVER COMPLAINED ONCE about her circumstances.  Never blamed God.  Never asked for anything out of the ordinary, and refused help that would inconvenience others.  In fact, once when she was revived from an anemia coma, she woke to see my mother's face and said..."Oh...not you again, Maggie"--apologetically, as if my mother's faithful attendance to her mother's care was more than could be expected.

So...here I am.  I have more aches and pains--serious aches and pains that actually affect my ability to get around and just live--and I don't know what to compare it to.  My family didn't let on.  Did they feel as bad as I do?  Am I just a drama queen in the face of pain with every step and movement?  Do other people suffer this way?  Have I tried enough to fix things?  Every day is something new.  I TRY not to complain, but it ain't easy. I hate whiners, but I am one, and it's not fun to admit.

If you hear me complaining about my lot in life, please remind me of my grandmother.  That will shut me up quickly.  God doesn't have a Complaint Department.  I need to learn how to be thankful just to be alive!!