Kelvin and Oxygen Tanks 1998

In September of 1998, Kelvin got news that his step-father was in the hospital and was dying. The bone cancer had spread to his brain. They wanted to gather the family together so his family had purchased tickets for the plane ride back to Sacramento for him. He was to pick them up at the airport. He gathered his bags and was gone.
When he came back the relationship was strained even more and I stayed in the kitchen most of the time and Kelvin had set up cots in the basement for him and Chuck on opposite sides. Kelvin’s bed was next to the door leading to the outside and outside that door was a vestibule and steps leading straight up to the street. I slept in the big waterbed alone in the large bedroom. He came and went as he pleased sometimes staying out all night. One morning I couldn’t sleep. It was 6 AM and he wasn’t home yet. Soon I heard his Chevy Blazer pulling up to the curb outside the basement door. I went to yell at him and saw that he had been drinking which was no surprise. All his “buddies” had gotten back together again and he was on a down hill spiral.
One morning about 2AM I awoke to yelling and started to the basement to see what was going on. Upon entering the stairs I could hear and man and a woman’s voice so I started down and yelled, “What is going on here?” I could see a half naked girl and her boyfriend was wailing away at Kelvin on the bed who made no attempt to fight back and appeared to still be sleeping. He was using an old broom handle and was putting large red whelps all over Kelvin’s back. When I asked again what was he doing he said he came down the steps to the vestibule and opened the door to the basement and caught her, his girlfriend, in bed with Kelvin. Kelvin appeared to be asleep and only groaned when the broom handle slapped against his back repetitively. She constantly sang her song of nothing happened and continued to put her blouse back on. I told them to both leave and never come back and told “Linda” never to call him again. When they finally left and I could get Kelvin awake long enough to talk, he said he didn’t do anything and was asleep and too drunk to do anything anyway. She had come down the steps from outside and let herself in. I’m sure he unlocked the door for her because I had checked that the door was locked when I went to bed at midnight, Kelvin was already home and said he was going to sleep. Chuck said he didn’t know anything and had been asleep on the other side when she came through the door. He said he didn’t see anything and didn’t hear anything until her boyfriend, who had followed her there from the bar, came in and started yelling and looking for something to beat Kelvin.
They never called or came over anymore. The boyfriend kept leaving messages all over town that he was going to kill Kelvin and ended with a Malta Cocktail thrown at the motorcycle I had bought and on a different occasion set the roof of the Blazer on fire, inspiring a police cruiser to stop and wake us up one night to let us know his truck was on fire. The motorcycle was almost destroyed but he paid someone he knew to repaint and replace the wiring. It was as good as new. The police was able to put out the fire on his truck’s roof.
After the death of Emily, Caregiver’s had me back in nursing homes to work. Every nursing home had a different policy on what to do so every time I moved to a different home I had to get used to new policies and what was acceptable in which nursing home.
When I had worked those six years at Heartland we had respiratory therapy to come in and change-out the Oxygen tanks. We had some but little training on the big tanks in nursing school almost 10 years before but we as nurses had the nurses’ aides switch the tanks when they became empty or we called respiratory therapy. Mostly the patients that needed Oxygen were on Oxygen concentrators that used the room air and never had to be replaced just the amount of liters adjusted to doctor’s orders. Only the nurses could adjust the amount of Oxygen. In nursing homes they rarely used concentrators and we dealt with the large steel cylinders. One day I was sent to Stanberry which is about 50 miles to the north of Saint Joseph, on a long, winding hilly black top, North Route 169.

A New Beginning 1993

The next two weeks were spent going to work, picking Kelvin up after work and going home to my trailer in Wathena. One evening after dropping Kelvin off at his apartment, I was sitting at the nurse's station getting ready for the evening's med pass, when a panicked Kelvin came off the elevator, stating," My apartment building burned last night and all my things are ruined!" His downstairs neighbor had been drinking and had gone to bed with a lit cigarette. The upstairs apartment above him, Kelvin's apartment, was smoke damaged. The fire had been contained in the closet where Kelvin had kept memorabilia such as pictures and letters from his mother. His clothes hanging in the closet were stained with water and the strong odor of smoke lingered on them, including his shirt he had gotten from his cousin Kyle, who had been in the Navy. Kyle had sent him a shirt from Singapore. It was a white shirt with blue Asian style designs on it and he was especially fond of that shirt. We had it cleaned and it was good as new. The firemen had gotten there quickly but deemed the apartment building uninhabitable. He had to find another place to live.
I didn't want to leave him hanging since he had no place to live, his family lived in Sacramento, California, so I told him he could live with me until he could find some place else to hang his shirt, so to speak. He thought about living with Kyle, now out of the service and settled with a new wife who was pregnant with their first child. I was hesitant in getting involved again so soon after the "fiasco" with Bill.
He never moved out and I liked having someone to come home to after work. He filled my head with tales of horror stories that were reminiscent of a Hollywood movie, action adventure. I should have listened and realized the things he was telling me were true, life experiences. I dismissed everything as I would after watching a television program, I could always turn off the set and go back to my real life and never think of it again, but this was a life he had lived.
He had a dog named Crusher. Crusher was a Pit Bull. He would only listen to Kelvin. He was a fighter and hated cats. He said he loved Pizza and would go crazy when Kelvin would show him a Pizza box. Kelvin took Crusher with him everywhere he went. One day he took Crusher outside, not having a fence around the yard and knowing his hatred for cats and other dogs, people etc, he had him tied up in the yard with a strong chain or cable. It was Summer time and in the summer in Missouri and Kansas the heat index can quickly get over 100 degrees and the humidity was thick as a blanket on a cold winter's night. It was 10:00 in the mornig when he put Crusher outside. The phone rang in the house. He ran inside to answer it. It was a buddy wanting to reminisce about the goings on of the previous night. He said he was on the phone for about 45 minutes. Off the phone, finally, he went back outside to get Crusher. It was already getting excruciatingly hot, Crusher was used to being in the house with air conditioning. He found his dog lying on the ground, barely breathing. He rushed him to the veterinarian's office. Crusher had died of heat prostration. The vet said because he was used to air conditioning, the period of exposure to the heat was more than he could bear. It was a long time before Kelvin could wrap his mind around the death of his best friend. He knew others who left their dogs outside all year round. They had gotten used to the gradual rise in temperatures or the sudden drop to below zero weather in the Winter time that the Midwest experienced. I had always kept Pebbles in the house when it was too hot or too cold. Our other dogs and cats were usually kept outside, Charles wouldn't allow them inside, but they had access to barns or sheds, trees that provided adequate shade. Kelvin lived in the city where it was hotter than the country, the heat from the buildings, pavement and cement kept the temperature at least ten degrees hotter or more.
In January of 1993 Lee ann, who lived in the trailer park by the Belt Highway, told us about the trailer in the park that was a double wide. It was very nice inside and out. There was barely a yard. It was 375.00 a month. I didn't know how I was going to pay that high of rent when the rent I was paying for the "cardboard" box I was living in was 175.00 a month, uncertain every month how I was going to come up with that. Kelvin said his disability check would start coming in March. We could use that to pay the rent and all I had to pay would be the utilities. It had central airconditioning, and a good furnace for the Winter. It was insulated and very warm.
While I was at work I got a call from Kelvin who said the move was done, and I just had to go to the new trailer when I got off work. It was so pretty. It still had the new trailer smell, new cabinets. A built in washer and dryer. No more laundromats for me!
In the Spring we bought roses and gladiolas for the scant yard. Kelvin built a fence around it for Pebbles.He spent his days planting the roses. We watched the flowers grow and bloom. A man he knew that lived in the trailer court worked for a construction company and helped Kelvin build a deck leading up to the front door. I bought a swing and he hung it on the deck for me.
In March he asked me to marry him one night, lying in the bed after love making. I questioned his sincerity of the matter due to the timing of the proposal. He said he felt as if I had saved his life the night of the apartment fire. If I hadn't taken him home to be with me, he would have been asleep in the bed. He couldn't go to bars anymore or get into any trouble due to his parole. The firemen said if he had been home he would have died of smoke inhalation. He said he loved me and didn't want to live without me ever.