The Gift A Memoir By Ginny Craven The giver receives the real gift – an emotional bequest, borne only of true, selfless service.
Some years ago, I took an extraordinary journey of heart that began when I volunteered for a Miami hospice organization. It was then that I met Marva Marshall. Marva was an elegant person with an indomitable spirit whose deep, booming voice and Cheshire cat grin preceded her into every room. Her attitude belied the apparent circumstances of her life. She had a host of medical conditions – thrice weekly dialysis, degenerative heart disease among them – illnesses severe enough to be admitted to hospice, which presupposes a six-month life expectancy. I visited her a couple of times a week in her apartment in Liberty City – a ramshackle little hovel with a rusted refrigerator and family photos of grandsons and nephews in their prison jumpsuits, not the nicest part of Miami to be sure. The first time I took my kids to meet Miss Marva, there was a drug bust right in front of us – guys plastered to the hoods of police cars. The sheer dichotomy of life experience was, well, black and white. I would go just to chat or play a game of cards or to color (We both loved to color). I brought her some vegetable plants for a little garden, food and sundries . . . Our very divergent lives began to meld on the most basic level. In the summer of 2007, my family took an epic vacation lasting a full two months. While away, I got a call from Miss Marva saying that she had been “kicked out of hospice.” By her estimation, she wasn’t dying fast enough for them. Great news to be sure, although her maintenance care most certainly deteriorated after that. When I returned in late August, Marva was as spirited as ever, though she seemed more tired, a little more frail. She would walk with a walker just a few steps and be winded. Nonetheless, she rarely complained – even a little bit. Her granddaughter, Linda, had moved in with her over the summer – a quiet 18 year-old who was expecting a baby in November. Marva believed in caring for the child and wouldn’t have considered recommending an abortion; it was God’s will. You begin to see the cycle of poverty and the seemingly endless ripples of a poor decision – only those bad choices have so much more impact in Marva’s world. Linda’s father, Marva’s only son, had died sixteen years before from AIDS. Marva told me about getting the news of his death. She said that she ran from the house screaming. She just totally lost control. That’s not a hard one to understand. It created such a vivid picture for me. It still makes me feel as though I’m going to suffocate just to think about it. Linda and her sister, Melissa, were Marva’s grandchildren. Melissa, a surly, angry teenager had had a baby at 13. After their father died, they bounced between reluctant family members; their mother was a crack addict and although she lived in Miami, the girls hadn’t seen her for years. Although Marva stepped in to take care of Linda, her failing health didn’t allow her to do much, but she was there – the eternal matriarch. 52
