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Elder Stories
Mae Medicine Bird, Wife of Homer Medicine Bird
Mae Medicine Bird, Wife of Homer Medicine Bird Mae Medicine Bird was ill when Father Emmett entered her cabin. Her body was drawn in pain and her face ashen. Several days had passed since she fell backwards off the porch, breaking her hip. If ever there was a need for an Assisted Care Center, it was for this 80-year old lady who died because of her injury. |
I sensed something was wrong the minute I got to Mae Medicine Bird's cabin. Her two dogs didn't announce my arrival with their usual barking, they laid on the door stoop whimpering, moving just enough to let me get through to the door.
With a feeling of uneasiness, I rapped on her door but no one answered. I knocked a little harder and thought I heard Mae's feeble voice. When I opened the door, I found Mae lying on her bed, her body drawn up in pain and her face ashen. Tears filled her eyes as she told me that several days before she had been feeding her dogs when she stepped backwards and fell off the porch and landed on her hip. "It hurts so much," she winced, "I can't sleep....can't get up."
I rushed back to my office at the mission and called for an ambulance. An hour later it finally arrived. Mae screamed in pain as they loaded her into the ambulance for the long, sixty-mile trip to the hospital. The doctors couldn't do much for the 80-year-old lady, but they tried to keep her as comfortable as possible
Gangrene had already set in due to the lack of blood supply to the injury. Mae died a few days later.
Mae Medicine Bird had a hard life. In her old age she never got to experience the conveniences that people on the reservation were beginning to enjoy in 1966, the year she died. She had no electricity, no running water or indoor plumbing, no radio or television set. She had never turned on a stove or watched a clock.
Instead, she carried two heavy buckets of water from the river, which was a long hike, her thin frame bowed over like prairie reeds in the wind.
As I look back over the years, I wonder how Mae or any of the Cheyenne elders survived. If ever there was a need for an Assisted Care Center, it was for the "old people" who endured difficulties and hardships beyond description. Sometimes I ask myself, "Was I so hardened to their sufferings that I failed to recognize what they were going through?" No, I hope not.
Thirty some years have passed since Mae Medicine Bird died and still the Cheyenne elders don't have a decent place to go when they are old, a home near enough to the reservation where they can be visited by loved ones. Most live alone with no one to routinely look after their daily needs. The old folks long to live with their children and grandchildren, but younger family members are struggling to provide for their own families. Days go by before anyone checks on the elders, especially during the bitter winter weather.
