Goodbye Sweetest One

Julie Anne Hendrick, 54, died on Saturday, May 2, 2020, at her home in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. She was born on March 22, 1966 in Livermore, California, to George and Dianna (Cummings) Hunt.

Julie grew up in Central Point, Oregon, graduating from Crater High School in 1984. After high school she attended Southern Oregon State College followed by Oregon State University where she received a Bachelor's Degree in Elementary Education.  In 1995, Julie graduated from the University of Arizona with a Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology.   

Following her graduate degree, Julie worked as a speech pathologist at elementary schools within the Alexandria City School District (1995-1999), the Fairfax County School District (2001-2006), both in Northern Virginia, and the Amphitheater School District (2006-2015) in Tucson, Arizona.   She loved her work, dedicating herself to the well being of her students, and building many lasting relationships with valued colleagues.  

Julie married Angus Hendrick in 1990 in Portland, Oregon. The marriage ceremony, which took place before the Justice of the Peace, was celebrated for 30 years (though sometimes on the wrong day).  Following the birth of their children:  Haley in 1996, and Angus in 1998, Julie was a dedicated mother.  She took a break from full-time work from 1999-2001 to take trips into DC with her children, pulling them in a wagon to see the museums and monuments.  The family moved to Tucson in 2006 in support of her husband's education, and Julie raised her teenage children alone in Tucson from 2012-2015, when he returned to work on the east coast.  

Julie enjoyed music, gardening, watching soccer, sewing, drawing, knitting, painting, collage, and a thousand other things she would collectively call crafting.  Julie also enjoyed traveling, and took a number of road trips around the United States and Canada.  Her first trip to Europe came in 2007.  Traveling alone, she took planes, trains, and automobiles into rural Italy, where she did not speak the language.  After seeing both children safely into college, she reunited with her husband in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, in 2015.  

Following a return trip to Italy with her family for Christmas, 2015, Julie began suffering from unexplained symptoms that were eventually diagnosed as a malignant brain tumor.  Treatment and recovery followed, as well as many more trips to favorite places old and new, including London, DC, Disneyland (where she ran a half marathon), Tucson, Dayton (Tennessee, where she saw the total eclipse), Paris, Death Valley, Portland, Hawaii, and Australia.  

After three-and-a-half years the tumor unexpectedly recurred in November 2019.  Another round of surgery and a clinical trial chemotherapy were followed by another trip, this time to Belize at the end of the protracted Pennsylvania winter and beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic.  Scans upon her return showed continued tumor growth.  Following additional surgery and chemotherapy, she began a steady decline.  

Throughout her battle with cancer, Julie was supported by the love of friends and family far and near.  She is survived by her husband, Angus, and her children, Haley and Angus, of Bellefonte, Pennsylvania; her parents George and Dianna of Pleasant Gap, Pennsylvania; her brother Greg (spouse Dick) of Walnut Creek, California; her sister Leslee, of Portland, Oregon.  She is also remembered by her aunts Susan and Julie, and their children and grandchildren, in a large and loving extended family.

No service is planned, owing to the quarantine.  An event will be planned at a future time in celebration of Julie's life.  Eventual burial will be at Jacksonville Cemetery, near her sister Lorrie, who died as an infant before Julie's birth.  In lieu of flowers the family requests memorial donations be made to the Faith Centre in Bellefonte. Condolences may be left as comments, or sent via email.

The Hill in the Back

Julie continues to sleep more and do everything else less.  We sit in the bedroom with her, alone or in groups. We read, talk, listen to her playlists, watch television, and play video games.  Someday we will look back on this time together and wonder why we didn't do something more befitting the gravity of the situation, but we don't.  Mostly we just wait.

Ever since we moved into this giant house, Julie has been hard at work remaking the yard.  The most enduring project has been the hill in the back of the house.  The hill comprises most of the view from the window in the family room where we spent much of our time, and has been almost continually covered with weeds.  Periodically, Julie has stripped it bare and tried to plant something there.

Last year's plan was wild flowers.  The seeds were sprinkled but never sprouted, and the weeds eventually reclaimed the muddy hill.  This year, Julie located some ornamental grasses designed to grow in the cool part shade of the hill.  I ordered them  several weeks ago when there was still a layer of dead leaves covering the hill.  They arrived yesterday, just in time, I think, to find the hill covered in wild flowers...

...or perhaps they're weeds, but they have little white flowers on them.

In any case, we now have a flat of nine Gracillimus Miscanthus plants and another ten on the way of Japanese Hakone Grass that have no place to go.  We're giving them away if anyone wants them.  That's right, just like in high-school, you can come by my place and I'll hook you up with some awesome grass.

Sleeping

Julie never really woke up today.  Sitting up in her wheelchair a half sleep that intermittently became full sleep, she eventually ate most of two pieces of avocado over several hours.  She's been lying in bed sleeping since around 1330.  While she rarely responds to questions, occasionally she will move or speak briefly in response to something that connects with her:  a bit of music or something funny.

During the day, she is mostly accompanied by her mom and my mom, with visits from the rest of us.  In the evenings the kids and I convene in the master bedroom and watch TV and play games.  Once they go to sleep, it's mostly me until the morning, but I have help if I need it.  The cat also likes to be close to her and is usually at least on the bed, if not sprawled out next to her.

In my discussions with the doctors, I think we're going to see less and less time awake.  To quote the oncologist, we are bad at predictions, but my sense is that there are not a lot of days left.  Hopefully they will be sunny ones, maybe even warm enough to open the windows.  A bit of fresh air would make her happy.

30th Anniversary

We always forgot, both of us, what day our anniversary was.  Is it April 23 or April 27?  Answer:  it's April 23.  Thirty years today. 

Reaching Out

Getting lots of folks reaching out to Julie and me, which is all super appreciated.  I go through her phone at least once a day and show her the pictures and videos and read the messages to her.  I likewise share anything you send me for her.  I've tried to respond to everyone, but my apologies to anyone who is sending stuff who I have not replied to.  

We got a new bed pillow for her yesterday.  She can't quite stay sitting up in it by herself, but she can kind of lean against me, and we watch TV together. She likes Letterkenny and The Goldberg's. 

Hospice arrives today at 0900 to start the check-in process.

Bedtime

Fluffelina spends a lot of quality time with her mommy.

Morning Songs

In the mornings Julie is more alert and engaged, though everything is relative:  this morning is better than yesterday evening, but not as good as yesterday morning.  In the afternoons she fades and becomes less and less responsive, mostly laying in bed and seeming to float in and out of consciousness.

My favorite times are when she sings a song based on something said.  This morning I was trying to get her to take her pills.  She needs three each morning, and her pill-taking preference is water first then pill.  She can still mostly manage that, but she forgets to hold the water in her mouth.  She might take ten sips of water before she remembers to hold one.  It's an act of monumental concentration for her.  I would say "Take a little sip," and she would sing "Take a little sip, take a little sip, take a little sip with me," to the tune of Low Rider.

Yesterday she was fairly bright and engaged in the morning.  She had pulled a pillow onto her head from the wall that keeps her from falling, and I asked her if she knew how pillows worked, to which she replied "I know how pillows work, asshole," and smiled.  We eventually moved the pillows from on top of and beside her to beneath her so she could kind of sit up in bed, but she tends to fall sideways.  We ordered a fancy bed-pillow and hopefully this will give her another choice for sitting up besides her wheelchair, which is where she takes her meals.  We already have a table that extends over the bed for when the pillow arrives.

Her muscles are getting noticeably weaker and her left side is pretty much flaccid.  Until yesterday, I could clasp right hands with her together we would pull her to sitting.  This morning she could not help pull herself up with her right arm, so I took both arms and tried to ease her up to sitting with a gentle pull.  I heard a pop, and I think her left shoulder came out of joint.  I checked and it seemed to have gone back without incident, and it moved without further pain.  The new approach is to basically bend over chest-to-chest and pull her up that way.

She's becoming less communicative overall.  There's more moaning.  She's also becoming more fidgety, chewing her nails and her lip, shoving the covers and her clothing out of place, and occasionally grabbing things like pillows or chairs and moving them about repetitively and somewhat forcefully.  However, sometimes when we put her Kermit the Frog next to her, she still gives her best Miss Piggy impression:  "Oh, Kerrrmmmyy."

The hospice nurse came today.  I think we're very close to making that transition.  I'm going to talk to the oncologist tomorrow about what further treatments might yield, as cessation of non-palliative care is a requirement for entering hospice.  Honestly the thought of driving her down to Hershey in a week seems crazy, and my sense is there is nothing left in the hopper to try.

For tonight, we have set up a TV in the bedroom and the kids are playing Borderlands at the foot of the bed, while I type and she rests fitfully.  Hopefully there will be more songs in the morning.