Small Blips: A Portrait of Love
By: Debi Smith
Tags: Love, Masks, Alzheimers, Coronavirus, Covid 19

By Debi Smith

I carefully retrieved the large manila envelope that had been crammed into my mailbox by my postal carrier, wryly noting the words clearly written multiple times in slightly shaky penmanship on the outside: Photos, Do Not Bend.

After opening and discarding the crumpled envelope, and sanitizing my hands per the suggestions at the time during this Covid Age, I quickly perused the numerous yellowing newspaper clippings, official documents dating back over 60 years, 17 pages of handwritten notes, and the four dozen original photographs, thankfully all of which, especially the photos, were still intact.

The photos consist of a few black and whites of their early years and engagement, assorted pictures of family and friends through the years, photos of trips around the country and to Europe, and photos of their 60th anniversary party in 2017 at the memory care facility.

One photograph in particular, gets to me. It is Sally, smiling, looking directly into the camera. She’s there. Her handwriting, as it does so many of the others Pete sent, graces the back of the photograph: “Sally Hegg, June 2004, dinner & golf w/Heggs, Spears, and Wambolts.”

Pete’s writing appears underneath Sally’s; I presume it’s there for my benefit: “One of my favorites of Sally.”

A couple of weeks earlier I had asked Pete if he would mind if I wrote about him and Sally, and would he be willing, following our chat on the phone, to jot down some memories. His reply had been a quick, “Sure, it’ll give me something to do besides read trashy novels.”

Looking through the notes and memorabilia Pete sent, I felt both honored and horrified. I was now not only entrusted with protecting some of Pete’s most treasured documents and photos; he was also trusting me, I presumed, to do his and Sally’s story a modicum of justice. What have I gotten myself into, I wondered. This isn’t the kind of writing I usually do, after all. Have I bitten off more than I can chew? Perhaps, but I had already committed!

Hoquiam and Aberdeen are sister towns in Washington State, located on the bay of Grays Harbor. The harbor was named after — not the annual average number of gray days as one might assume — but Captain Robert Gray, who, sailing under papers signed by President George Washington, entered the harbor while on a fur expedition in 1792. Gray certainly was not the first man in the area, but he was the first white man known to make note of the harbor.

Grays Harbor is one of the deepest natural ports on the West Coast and once lead the world in log exports in the early part of the 20th century. The harbor is more recently famous for the spotted owl controversy of the 90s, and for being the birthplace of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain.

Aberdeen and Hoquiam are two towns joined together yet demarcated by Myrtle Street and governed by two separate city governments, two towns that enjoy the oldest high school football rivalry in the state (locals like to say “west of the Mississippi” but I could not verify this), two towns colloquially referred to as “the harbor.” This is the place in which Pete and Sally met, the place in which their lives continued weaving the tapestries that had been in process before them, and which will continue long after.

Talking with Pete over the phone, I learned that he and Sally had met as sophomores at the first high school dance of the year at Hoquiam High School. It was 1951, at the same location my kids and their cousins would float paper planes from the bleachers down to the gym floor at a community paper plane “fly-in” event forty plus years later.

After their first dance, Pete walked Sally home to her house just a block away. They dated on and off a bit that year, until becoming serious their junior year. Sally continued her club involvement and would become a class officer and Queen of the Mother’s Day Tea Court, while Pete played football and baseball and would become class vice president.

Pete is the eldest of three children born to Harold (Guy) and Eva in Aberdeen. His father, like his grandfather before him, had a successful construction business on the harbor, and his mother did all of the bookkeeping for the company. His paternal grandparents were Norwegian immigrants; his maternal grandfather was of Irish/Scottish/English descent. He is less sure about his maternal grandmother. “All I know,” he said, reflecting, “was that she was possibly part Native American, and that she was born in Nebraska and moved with her parents from Kansas to Aberdeen in the 20s.”

Pete continued, “Grandpa Gordon delivered milk house-to-house for most of his working life. He died the same week that Sally’s dad died. Grandma Gordon died shortly after. She had bouts of depression, just like my mom did. She loved to play games with me when I was a child.”

Sally is the second youngest of George and Ellen’s ten children raised in the family’s small home with one bathroom on Karr Avenue in Hoquiam. Today, Sally’s youngest sister Janice, the only other surviving sibling, lives at the other end of Karr Avenue (across the street from Pete’s sister), where she and her husband Chuck raised their own family.

Janice, speaking by phone on a recent Sunday evening, shared a few reflections on her childhood home. “We didn’t have money, but we ate well, even during the Depression. My brother Charlie would show up with crab from his boat. The crab would walk across the floor, and Charlie would throw them live into the pot on the stove,” she told me, laughing. Janice continued reminiscing, “At that time, the stove was fed by wood. About once a week my mom would heat water and Sally and I would take baths in the kitchen in a tub. We didn’t know any different; it was always a happy home!”

Janice ticked off all of the dates of her siblings’ births: “Marion in 1919, Pat in ’20, George in ’21, Charles in ’22, Peggy in ’23, Walt in ’24, Phyllis in ’26, Joan in ’29, Sally in ’36, and me in 1937. I think my mom liked having babies! Sally and I were the youngest, and most of the others had grown and moved out once we were teenagers, so we were especially close. We used to do the dishes together, singing and dancing.”

I asked Janice how she felt when Sally got married and moved out. “Oh, I didn’t mind. I finally had my own room for the first time in my life!”

Following high school, Pete enrolled in school at Western Washington College of Education in Bellingham, where he majored in history and minored in math. At the same time, Sally stayed on the harbor and took secretarial classes at Grays Harbor College.

Pete recalled, “There was no telephone available where I was living in Bellingham. Even if there had been, long-distance calling was cost-prohibitive. So we wrote each other letters on just about a daily basis.” He paused for a brief moment, and then answered my question before I asked it, “I don’t know what happened to those letters, maybe they are around somewhere.”

Pete proposed to Sally in the spring of 1957. “She had been living for a time in Everett with her sister Joan and her husband. Through our letters, I think we just assumed we would marry, though I don’t recall an actual proposal,” he laughed, “I just gave her an engagement ring, which Janice helped me to pick out, when I retrieved Sally from the bus in Olympia.”

Slightly more colorful commentary regarding their engagement can be found in the yellowed newspaper clipping Pete sent, chatty reporting that was common during the day, especially in small communities:

During the evening, games were played in which the engagement ring was concealed . . . Miss Norris revealed her presence at the party at this time.

The report detailed the guest list, what the bride-to-be wore, and went on effusively about the decorations, including:

The party table was centered with an arrangement of pink and white summer blooms flanked on either side by pink candles. The cake was inscribed with the names of the affianced couple: Sally and Pete.

Pete and Sally were married later that summer. “We thought everything was perfect,” Pete recalled. “The morning after our wedding at the Methodist Church, we left for Bellingham in a ’50 Chevrolet, or maybe it was a ’49. No money to speak of, just one lamp in the back,” he added with a chortle as we talked on the phone and I tried to keep up taking notes. “We had just enough for me to go back to school for my senior year and finish earning my teaching degree. On the way back to Bellingham, we spent one night in a seedy motel in Shelton and then honeymooned for two nights on Hood Canal, courtesy of Auntie Pat and Uncle Arvo.” (Pat was another of Sally’s sisters, her husband Arvo had been a flamethrower who survived the battle of Iwo Jima, earning a purple heart and nightmares for the rest of his life.)

Pete signed his first teaching contract at his high school alma mater in the spring of the next year. He had majored in history, “but the coaches were getting those jobs,” he laughed wryly, so most of his teaching would center on math. In the file he sent me was the contract he had signed on April 23, 1958, for an annual salary of $4180. He was quick to point out later when we talked that this came out to $270 a month after taxes. “Sheryl was born halfway through that first year. We survived! Mark came the next year, and Ken a couple of years after that. Later times, when I came to know you, we were getting to be pretty stable,” he added, matter-of-factly.

I first met Pete and Sally in the mid-80s at a backyard picnic at their son Mark’s house in Olympia, which he shared with his cousins Jodi and Julie. Mark and I had met through a friend and were seeing each other a little bit, nothing serious, though I thought it a good sign that he included me in the picnic with his parents. Life, though — as it seems want to do — had other plans, and I soon lost track of Mark. Until a couple of years later, when a new man I was dating, Bruce, started talking about his cousin Mark, and his sisters Jodi and Julie.

Two years later, Sally would hold a joint bridal shower for Janice’s daughter Julie, and for Janice’s soon-to-be new daughter-in-law: me. A year after that, Sally would host a joint baby shower for her niece Konnie and me, where Konnie and I both laughed aloud after secretly sharing the names we had chosen for our babies: same names, just spelled differently.

Continuing with details of their early years, Pete talked about leaving Sally at home with two kids under age three while he spent eight weeks at the University of Idaho, “getting more education under my belt.” He then became a counselor at the high school in 1968. In 1971 he was named the vice principal. Sally, the kids a little older and in school now, worked part-time in the high school library.

Mark, chatting via email, recalled a memorable event during this time. “I will never forget one family vacation we took when I was ten years old. My father had just bought a brand new Chevy station wagon and we drove to Disneyland. We took Gramma Norris! Of course we checked in with aunts, uncles, and cousins all along the way, and we stayed at the Jolly Roger Inn and swam in the outdoor pool. Great memories! Except for one scary moment when Dad was pulled over for going 85 in a 70 mph zone!”

During the next three summers, Pete commuted to Bellingham each week to earn his master’s degree in Education Administration and his principal certification, returning home to Sally and the kids for the weekends. In 1974, he applied for and was awarded a principal position that had opened in Eatonville after the 40-year-old principal there died mowing his lawn before baccalaureate. Reflecting on the tragedy, and the impact it had on both families, Pete noted, “His wife was from Aberdeen, and she and her family made us very comfortable in the transition. She moved back to Aberdeen a couple of years after and became an influential part of the Grays Harbor College staff.”

It’s interesting how a tragedy — or even just one seemingly arbitrary moment, or well-planned decision — can reorient entire trajectories. Decisions or events that, if changed by only a blip, can completely alter (or even negate) one’s existence. And then there’s the impact of these small blips on many other individuals, families, and communities.

I asked Pete how Sally had felt about leaving her hometown. He had known that to become principal, he’d most likely have to leave the harbor at some point. “Sally knew this,” he said. And when he told her it was time to move, she had said, “Okay, where to?”

The kids weren’t so amiable to leaving Hoquiam at first. “We uprooted them from their hometown, and while it was easier on Ken, who was younger, Sheryl and Mark were suddenly in a new school, and their dad was the principal!”

Sheryl and Mark adjusted quickly though, and the entire family integrated fully into the small community nestled in the foothills of Mt. Rainier. The kids excelled in school and sports, before graduating and moving on to college. Sally kept things moving on the home-front, and also worked for Eatonville’s small newspaper, The Dispatch, and part-time as a teacher’s assistant. “All the money Sally made went right toward the kids’ college,” Pete shared proudly.

After eight memorable years in Eatonville, with many lifelong family friendships made, Pete and Sally were elated to move back to Hoquiam, where Pete had signed a new contract at his former high school, this time to be the principal.

As previously noted, Pete is matter-of-fact in style. He is also strongly opinionated. Neither traits signify he isn’t thoughtful, caring, or unable to listen to others. He and I have had our spirited debates over the years, which always helped expand my knowledge and opinions. I’ve always appreciated that he was generous at listening, reflecting, and admitting where his opinion might have altered as well. Knowing this, it was not surprising to read the first two paragraphs of the Daily World newspaper feature detailing his return to Hoquiam in 1982, and his philosophy:

Pete Hegg, who takes over as principal of Hoquiam High School next fall, believes people need a pat on the back once in a while.“My general philosophy is that people — teachers, kids and everybody — want to do a good job,” he said. “They need to be reinforced for the good things they do.”

Pete was a beloved principal at the high school until he retired in 1993, the same day my father-in-law Chuck retired from the city’s sanitation department. The two were feted with a joint retirement party that summer — more like a family reunion — with friends, family, and a flock of little ones coming from near and far for food, memories, poetry, and laughter. Thereafter, fortunate to have been able to retire early, the two couples — Pete and Sally and Chuck and Janice — enjoyed several trips to spring training in Arizona together, with Chuck complaining about Pete’s driving the entire way (and long after the trips had ended).

Pete and Sally also traveled around the country to see friends and family, sometimes joined by good friends Sylvan and Peggy, or Ed and Jan. They also visited their son Ken, who moved to France in the early 90s. “He went to do golf course maintenance for a year and never came home,” Pete laughed. “We were happy to be able to go there and visit him and his wife, Phen.”

Throughout their many years in both Hoquiam and Eatonville, Pete and Sally remained deeply involved in their community. Pete has been an active member of the Lions club since 1974, where he is a past president, twice-named Lion of the Year, and a recipient of the Melvin Jones Award for humanitarian services (the highest honor in international Lionism). He was also the financial secretary for Hoquiam Methodist Church for over 20 years, where he and Sally were also both active in leadership roles. Sally enjoyed any opportunity to do things for others: volunteering at the senior center and the food bank, making cheese balls to gift during the holidays, knitting booties for all the new babies in the extended family and laughing uncontrollably when they ended up being way too big, and throwing parties whenever possible. They both adored their two grandsons Jeffrey and Casey, and visited them frequently.

Sheryl recalls fondly, “When the kids were little, Mom and Dad would often drive two hours to Port Orchard to attend Jeffrey and Casey’s school or sports events. They would have the boys overnight on weekends and sometimes for several days. They took the boys on hikes, fishing . . . they loved playing.” Sheryl continued more somberly when talking about her mom, “My mom was my best friend. I talked to her almost every day. Over time it was hard to talk to her on the phone though. She got to a point where she really didn’t have much to say.”

Sally began having slight memory problems in 2005. “Nothing too serious,” Pete explained, “just small lapses.” As time went on, however, and the disease progressed, Sally’s brain function continued deteriorating. She became more agitated and angry, sometimes trying to escape their home, or often yelling hurtful obscenities at Pete — traits common with dementia even if uncommon to the individual before the onset of the disease.

Pete finally conceded that he needed help and hired someone from an agency to come in for a few hours each day, “So I could leave the house, go to the gym, make sure Sally stayed home,” he said. “I needed to be out of the house at least a little. Sally wasn’t cooking or cleaning at this point, and she had lost control of her bladder, and then the other end. I knew it was time.”

Sheryl said an especially challenging moment arose in 2014. “Dad was having chest pains. I was told that caregivers often sacrifice their own health in caring for their loved one. The thought that he could die and leave Mom alone and confused was a real possibility.”

Pete, who had survived colon cancer 13 years previously, went to the doctor and two days later underwent triple bypass heart surgery. Sheryl and Mark both took a leave from work to care for their parents. Following his recovery, Pete resumed being Sally’s primary caretaker, along with receiving help from the agency. Within the year, however, the difficult decision was made to move Sally to an assisted living facility.

“They told me to stay away for two weeks so that it would be easier for Sally to adjust,” Pete told me over the phone.

“That must have been difficult,” I lamely offered.

“I was pretty exhausted at that point. Longtime friends brought food — Janice, Larry and Joann, Sylvan and Peggy, Ed and Jan — we had dinners, six or eight of us in my small house,” Pete paused before continuing. “Alzheimer’s has slowly taken nearly everything away from her, but Sally is a battler. And I have been fortunate to have been able to visit and feed her breakfast and lunch nearly every day of these past few years.”

My daughter worked for a short time in a local memory care facility a couple of years ago and when I shared Uncle Pete’s experience with her she was shocked. “Mom! It is so rare for someone in memory care to receive visits every day from their loved ones, much less twice a day, for years!”

Auntie Sally was the one who had hosted all of the big family functions: wedding showers, baby showers, Father’s Day picnics, Fourth of July barbecues, etc. If there was an occasion, Sally threw a party. My family has many fond memories of meals and moments shared at Pete and Sally’s over the years. She contributed so much to her family — both immediate and extended — and to her community.

“It’s ironic that mom would end up with a memory loss disease,” Mark shared with me via email. “It always seemed like she was the most organized when it came to life events. She knew everyone’s birthday, where they lived, all of their contact info. Mom loved knowing what was happening and made a point to be there, and she always made everyone around her feel like they were the most important person on earth.”

To this day, despite the advanced Alzheimer’s, Sally still lights up when she sees her young great-granddaughters, Sally Blossom and Eleanor.

Sally’s care at the long-term care facility in Hoquiam comes at a cost of $8000 per month, a figure Pete continues to pay, without complaint, until he depletes their financial assets to the point where they qualify for Medicaid. Pete is appreciative of the care she is receiving, “It is well-managed, with caring staff. Many have become my friends over time. I believe she is much loved and well cared for.”

Once Covid-19 hit, Pete was no longer able to visit Sally in person. “They shut me out the last part of February,” he said. “The administrator of the place Sally is in was way ahead of the curve, taking action even before Governor Inslee. He met with me and explained how illness spreads like wildfire in long-term care facilities. I understood, of course. Sally has a room right on the courtyard, though, and I am allowed to look at her through the window. At first they would open it a little, but that ended soon.”

Pete continued, “I still go twice a day. Once at eight, to see if she is eating breakfast and I wave through the window, and at noon during lunch. I see her, sometimes she smiles.”

Aside from his twice-daily visits to peek into Sally’s window, or trips to the grocery store, Pete spends most of his time following the state’s stay-at-home orders. Up until Covid-19, he had remained active in his community and church and was still cooking and sharing dinner nearly every night with Janice.

Cancer took Chuck in 2011, and Janice wasn’t cooking for herself much anymore. Pete said he saw this, and knew Janice wasn’t going to survive on cold cereal and toaster waffles for very long, so he insisted she come to dinner nightly. “It was good for both of us, and she was such good company for Sally.” After Sally was moved to a facility, the dinners continued with the two in-law besties until Covid-19. (For readers who may be concerned about Janice, her daughter Jodi, practicing safe distancing, leaves dinner regularly for her mother.)

TNN — short for The Norris Network of family news — has it that Pete still enjoys a shot or two of whiskey in the evenings, and that before Covid-19 changed everything, he had considered making a whiskey run south to California with a friend. Bruce and I laughed when we heard this, and of course we would have loved it if he had stopped on his way back from the liquor store in Hilt, California, which is just a few miles across the border from us here in Ashland. Maybe I’d have put out some of that Humboldt Fog cheese and crackers that he and Sally enjoyed the last time they stopped. Pausing and reflecting further, wondering how I’d feel if I were in his shoes, I doubt it was the whiskey deal he was interested in as much as having a reason to get out on the open road again.

In this interview process, I sometimes felt like I was prying, or not asking the right questions to get past the facts to the feelings. Maybe I’m not very good at interviewing, I thought, or too sensitive when it’s family? I emailed Pete again, asking directly instead of hoping he would just offer it, and apologizing for the difficult question.

“How does it feel to have been unable to see Sally in person for so many months?”

“Sally and I spent every day since 1957 under the same roof,” Pete quickly replied to my email, “except for when I was away getting more education, and she was home alone with very young children.”

Pete’s short reply left me still feeling stumped. I had been hoping for something more poignant, words from Pete that I could add at the end here in some moving summation.

And then suddenly I realized that Pete didn’t need to say how he felt, his feelings were evident through his actions, and had been for all of his almost 63 years of marriage to Sally.

Pete had made a commitment to Sally when they married. Sure, there had been arguments and hurts; there had been challenging times, as there are in every marriage. And it hadn’t been easy caring for Sally once her health deteriorated, nor when she gradually forgot who her loved ones were. And it certainly hasn’t been easy that her care is draining Pete of all the assets he and Sally had both worked so hard for. But when they married, Pete had made a commitment to love and cherish Sally, in sickness and in health, till death they do part. And he meant it. If I wanted to know his feelings, I felt he was telling me, all I had to do was look at his actions.

In the forward and afterword to his notes to me, Pete wrote: “This is a disjointed messy outline, small blips on a wonderful marriage and a great life.”

While the individual blips may seem small — like the blips in those connect-the-dots worksheets I so loved completing as a young girl — when connected, they help reveal a bigger picture. Pete and Sally exemplify what true love and commitment in a marriage look like. I thank Uncle Pete for sharing his blips, and for allowing me to attempt my own disjointed, messy outline of his and Auntie Sally’s beautiful marriage, a story which also demonstrates, I think, the synchronous and beautiful way lives interconnect.

Afterword

Sally was tested for Covid-19 in late March after experiencing Covid-like symptoms. Thankfully, the test was negative, and the facility has remained Covid-19 free to date.

The disease has impacted every age demographic, and has had devastating impacts on minority populations. However, our seniors have taken the brunt of the dying, with many of them dying alone, their loved ones unable to enter the facilities to be by their side. According to recent reporting by the New York Times, 54,000 people to date — over 43% of all Covid-19 deaths in the country — have been recorded at long-term care facilities.

Unfortunately, we will likely experience future pandemics. As a recent piece in the New England Journal of Medicine points out, better options would help address the current crisis the residents in our long-term care facilities are facing and could help negate the severity of future pandemics.

Until we know more about the path of this pandemic, which is currently spiking in many states, we can do our part to help protect all of the vulnerable by following the guidelines set forth by the Centers for Disease Control and our state and local governments. Guidelines, supported by science, that include: washing our hands frequently, maintaining physical distancing, and wearing a mask when in public (especially indoors). We never know when one of these actions — practiced out of respect for others in our connected communities and world — will be the little blip that saves the life of another.