Back to Basics: Camp Gongi

Aunt Gongi: roommate, bridesmaid, duck advocate...

One of the best parts of doing this blog is having mom's past be dynamic- a living, breathing part of my day where humans inter-relate and discuss.  In that spirit, I wanted to share a recent email I received from mom's iconic roommate Pat Graham, aka Gongi.  I always knew her as Aunt Gongi.  She called Loie "Nutsy Mommy," but I'll save that story for another time.


On the eve of mom's yahrzeit Gongi's email serves as a wonderful reminder to the heart of mom's book.  She didn't do it to produce a biography, or to memorialize herself in bright lights.  In a word, advocacy was the theme of her work. 


Deep felt thanks to Gongi for allowing me to post her email, and thanks also for the advocacy reminder/reprise as I move forward with this project.


From Gongi:


I have wondered what had happened to Jan's dream of a book... I also contributed to her call for material for it when she was putting together a rough draft--- but she didn't like what I sent.  She said I had inspired her to leave behind the prosthetic for the patches and that was the story she wanted me to write, but what I sent her was more like a tale of "The Odd Couple"...!!!

But during her last years and months, she emailed me a lot, mostly tracking the frustration with the health care system and other mostly earthly concerns about insurance and money.  After she died, I printed out all of those emails and have them in a three ring binder.  They are stored in a drawer along with pictures and some other items.   Would you like to have the binder of emails to add to your blog?

I have felt guilty that I have not made a story of it-- I've waited for a "call" to take it all out and do that-- but perhaps it would be better in your hands to give you some more insights into the story that is flowing out of you now.  Yes, she was sweet and romantic and spiritual and reached hearts of a wide variety of people.  But she wasn't all poetry and strawberry cream.  She was tough, too--- she had to be tough to survive, to get the system so stacked against her to work for her.  She used her charms and her wits to get what she needed to get through the worst times and to get to the next day...

I have faced a lot of my own health challenges in recent years, forcing my retirement as an economics professor in December 2009, and I have survived using a lot of your Mom's strategies including No. 1: get your health caretakers on your side.  Make sure they know you as a person, a special individual, not just another "patient."  So I have learned to know the janitor's name, the name of the aide that wheels you to X-ray, and especially the names of the CNAs and nurses.  Yes, the doctor is important, too, but those nurses and CNAs are the people who hold your life in their hands.

Your Mom knew she couldn't battle all the demons alone.  So she knew how to "use people" in a good way--- she recognized special gifts in others and knew how to appeal to them so she could learn and absorb new ideas and energy that kept her going.  She was a kind of "wheeler-dealer" in the spiritual world--- appearing to be just a sweet little kid from suburban Illinois who just wanted to be a Christian Education director in the Methodist church. She looked like a real softy, a real pushover, but I'm telling you she had to have real rock hard guts and courage to reach the people and to get to the places she did. 


I'll bet she and Elizabeth Edwards are having a bit of a chat right now!