Friends through the ages

ESTHER FOLLMER was hardly more than a shadow beneath her pink blanket at Sylvan House.

At 95, she had one foot over life’s finish line. Her race would end at any moment and Alice Thibau’s heart would break. Alice, 43, considered Esther one of her best friends.

“When she passes, I’ll cry,” Alice said, gently sliding her healthy hand over Esther’s frail, veined one. “But I’ll have these wonderful memories.”

Alice watched Esther sleep like a mother gazing at her baby. The pink blanket rose slightly with each breath. Its steady movement comforted Alice. She backed quietly out of the room.

Alice met Esther two years ago. Sylvan House, an assisted living center, needed a licensed practical nurse. Alice couldn’t resist applying. She’d worked in Spokane’s Sacred Heart Medical Center’s burn unit and in doctors’ offices. Her heart had steered her into nursing, but her mind begged to know more than medical procedures.

“I love getting to know people, their history, making them feel they won’t be forgotten,” she says.

She learned in childhood to look past age. Her grandparents raised her and she adored them. At 15, she started work in a nursing home, feeding, changing and caring for residents. The work confirmed her need to help others, particularly people in their senior years.

But jobs in nursing homes were scarce after she graduated from college in 1980. Alice found work at Sacred Heart, married, raised her children, divorced, remarried and found Sylvan House in Hayden.

Sylvan is a dormitory for seniors and offers plenty of assistance. Esther was a resident. Alice fell for her smile the moment she saw it. Alice sensed a rich story behind Esther’s quiet demeanor.

“She’s one of the few remaining quiet souls,” Alice says. “In spite of her age, her eyes are so alive.”

At 93, Esther was full of life, but it was locked inside her. Alice unlocked it. She asked Esther about her life during World War I, the Depression, the swing era, World War II and the Kennedy years – most before Alice was alive and all before she was able to save her own memories. Esther told her about the Ritzville farm country where she started life in 1909 and the Spokane Valley where her family settled during her school years.

She showed Alice the scrapbook with her good-as-new certificate marking Esther Ruth Schaefer’s graduation from middle school and her 1927 diploma from Central Valley High School. Esther was valedictorian in an era when many girls didn’t finish school.

She told Alice that Matt Follmer won her heart. She married him in 1931 and they bought 320 acres on Hayden Avenue a decade later. They ran a dryland wheat farm together. Esther operated the combine; Matt drove the truck. A 1965 newspaper picture shows Esther at the combine wheel in her work clothes and hat with Matt standing by her.

The Follmers sold the farm in 1969 and moved to Post Falls, where Esther finally learned to ride a bike at age 64. Alice took Esther to visit the Hayden farm last year. Esther had never returned after she moved. They stopped for ice cream first, their favorite flavor – jamoca almond fudge. Then Alice drove Esther to the neat white farmhouse that had sheltered her for nearly 30 years.

Esther’s wheelchair couldn’t negotiate the farmhouse’s porch steps, so she chatted with the homeowner in the front yard, telling her the decades of secrets captured inside the walls. Alice took Esther to the farm again this year when the lilacs were blooming. No one was home. They cut some lilacs and took off. Esther teased Alice about “the theft.”

Esther taught Alice that Alice needs the friendship of seniors as much as they need her. Last year, Alice bought her own assisted living center in Post Falls – Living Springs. She continued caring for Esther at Sylvan House as a friend, even after Hospice entered the picture. Hospice enables people to die at home. Esther was ready. She needed transfusions to keep her alive, but they exhausted her. She finally refused any more. Alice promised to stand by her.

She was there Monday when Esther took her last breath.

“I encourage people to reach past their fears of age and death because there’s so much to gain,” Alice says, admiring a 1920s photo of a young, smiling Esther in close-fitting hat. “She’s such a dignified woman. I felt honored that she trusted me. In this day and age, trust is so vital. Her friendship has done so much for me.”

And it will remain with Alice long after a new tenant moves into Esther’s room at Sylvan House.