Column: On my watch – Seeing the Definition of these Words: “Love Is All There Is”
By Anne W. Semmes
It was time for that Saturday family dinner in Manhattan at my cousin’s apartment in the East Village with another visiting cousin to be present. I am often invited to spend the night but how to make the journey when I’m still limping from a journey to Barcelona to see other family where there was a lot of challenging walking. I decided to drive into the city with my cousin advising where to park. Amazingly, I found a parking place, and when I was having trouble processing the street parking ticket a bright female in line showed me how. Introducing Marcella Goheen.
Marcella lived nearby so could suggest where to find flowers for my cousin. She would walk me there, giving support crossing streets, and what I was learning from this “angel” was so impressive I invited her to tea in a nearby recommended coffee shop as I had arrived early for my dinner date. Marcella has had an interesting and angelic career. Her impressive bio – she is a caregiver advocate – can be found online but it was the unfortunate plight of her husband that captured.
Husband Bob Victor Viteri has a “rare neurogenerative disorder” that at age 65 left this special ed professional unable to walk, talk or take care of himself, and thus has been confined for seven-plus years in a nursing home in the city. Marcella visits him every day and explained what that was like. When she arrives and expresses her love and gives him a kiss, his only able response is to breathe a sigh. So, imagine her distress when Covid hit taking the lives of some 98 persons living in that nursing home, and caregivers were not allowed to visit their loved ones!
Marcella had promptly written a column about that crisis in her husband’s nursing home that was published in The New York Times in 2020. “Where was the leadership” The Plan? The resources?” she wrote. “The loss of 98 lives is nothing short of a tragedy.” But thankfully husband Bob survived. And, thanks to Marcella’s efforts of bringing to light this plight, on the very day she was prevented from entering the nursing home she founded, on March 12, 2020 www.essentialcarevisitor.com that became the Essential Care Visitor Bill passed in New York State on March 29 of 2021.
Also found in her bio, Marcella “currently sits on three subcommittees: Informal Caregiving, Health and Wellness, Long Term Services for Governor Hochul’s Master Plan for Aging, contributing to reform and transformation for dignified aging systems for the elderly and disabled New Yorker.”
But with our encounter Marcella was busily planning a birthday party for her husband on July 1, inviting his nursing home friends and caregivers. She also managed to receive a Proclamation on that day from the mayor of New York declaring July 1 Robert Victor Viteri Day. And joining the party that day was the New York Police Department Jazz Band.
Marcella presented me with a special tag she created for the party that featured a photo of her husband with the telling words, “Love Is All There Is.” “I love my husband,” she told over tea. Her column stated that when her husband’s “genetic-driven illness was seen to be irreversible,” and that “Long Term-care was inevitable,” her husband had voiced, “You can leave me if you want. I don’t want to be a burden.” Her response was instead, “You will be my joy.”
So, off she went with planning that special birthday, while this reporter headed for dinner with her cousins. And all evening I saw the love given to my years-long suffering dementia cousin now in her 70’s by her husband of many years. I saw the interplay between the cousins, all of us aware of what was missing in her understandings. But there was so often a smile on her face and on her caring husband’s face as he served her and us all a delicious dinner. The bottom line of this story is truly, “Love Is All There Is.” Thank you, Marcella, for spelling it out so well.
