A Tribute to Nanci Buhlman

--- by David Buhlman

Anne Marie “Nanci” (Norris) Buhlman passed away on Monday, August 11, 2008, at about eleven minutes passed the hour of 11 AM at St. Joseph Hospital in Nashua, New Hampshire. We would have been married for twenty-four years on November 9, and were together as a couple for twenty-seven years. They were glorious and blessed years for us both and, throughout these years, we realized how fortunate we were to have found each other.

This is a brief story of this brave, wonderful person, one who was beloved by all. It could be much, much longer if all that she did, if all that she meant to me, and to others, were described, but it’s about her, about Nanci, so she would not want too much attention, no matter how much she deserved it.

We met under unusual circumstances in 1981 at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. One of my uncles had trouble with alcohol and I took him to the emergency room of St. Elizabeth’s with the aim of getting him admitted to St. Elizabeth’s Comprehensive Alcohol Program (SECAP).

Someone in the ER let us know that a SECAP representative was on the way. In a few minutes I looked up, through my own hangover, to see a vision of loveliness gliding toward us. She was beautiful and looked about twenty-five. I knew that it simply could not be this person coming to handle my uncle, who was well experienced in these situations. But I sure hoped it was.

Nanci quietly took charge and led us to an interview room. There was a series of questions formulated to determine if my uncle fit the criteria for being admitted to SECAP. He was passing with ease when Nanci asked him if he used marijuana. At that, I laughed and she responded quite directly that there was another bed available in SECAP. For me. I was put in my place, and Nanci admitted my uncle after consultation with the medical doctor assigned to SECAP. My uncle was in SECAP for about seven days and I visited him several times. He and I were not that close then, so it was obvious that something else was drawing me there. It was clearly Nanci’s presence in the unit that made me a more dutiful nephew.

During her several years working as a counselor at SECAP, Nanci, helped hundreds get on the road to sobriety. I attended a couple of her presentations and she handled them with singular aplomb. Quiet, effective, in control. And this effort not only helped those with alcohol problems, but their families and friends as well. Thus thousands of lives were affected for the better due to Nanci’s dedication and abilities in helping those afflicted with addiction. That’s quite a record of accomplishment in life, although, in her modest way, she never wanted to hear about it. In another arena, she worked with Judge Kramer of the Quincy Court in the late 1980s to set up and implement a program for those arrested for driving under the influence. She taught those who would interact directly with the offenders how to handle the situations so as to maximize success by reducing the number of drunk drivers on the road.

We dated for a year before I moved into her house in Brighton with her two teenage sons, Donny and Stephen, and two large dogs, Koko and Hutch. Nanci was very proud of her boys, and worked very hard, as a devoted mother, to do the best by them. Those of you who know her two sons, know she did a great job. Regarding Koko and Hutch, who both weighed about ninety pounds, they would get into it once in awhile, a real dog fight. When I would notice a cut on her ankle or arm she would admit that she got in the middle of the dog fight to break it up. I witnessed a couple of these dog fights and these canines were not acting. I would help her break them up, and then ask her how she ever did it alone. She would say that she had to, she was the only one there at the time of the fight, and did not want her other “boys” to hurt each other.

In 1990, we packed up a truck and moved to Jacksonville, Florida with Koko and Hutch. Donny and Stephen had moved out by then, and Nanci’s brother lived in Jacksonville where he had moved about fifteen years before that. Since Nanci was going to ride in back with the dogs, we rented a truck that had a sliding door between the driver compartment and the back, where the cargo was carried. Nanci sat on a couch with the dogs sleeping in the middle, between our furniture. I will never forget looking back at Nanci and seeing those riveting green eyes staring back at me. It was quite a trip, in many ways, but that’s another story. Although she loved being near her brother and his wife, she did not like it there. So after seven months, we repacked and headed north to Boston, where her nephew Kenny was kind enough to let us move in for a few months.

In 1995, one of the worst things possible happened. Nanci’s sister, Rosalie, a living saint and mother of seven (please pardon the redundancy), passed away after a long illness. Nanci was devastated, but hung in there. She never got completely over Rosalie’s death, which is appropriate. Rosalie Norris Holman was tops in everyone’s book.

Also in 1995, Nanci had her first stents put in at St. Elizabeth’s in Boston. In the intervening years, she had a total of eleven stents inserted, but none in the heart where many people have them. During the testing procedures and the operations to insert the stents, one has to be awake. I was able to accompany her to the very door of the room where the procedures would take place and not one time did she show any fear. No “Why me,” no visible tension, just assuring me that she was okay and that things would go fine. And they did go fine, except for me praying and wringing my hands in the waiting room. She had a sureness and bravery about the medical procedures she endured that I still find astounding. There were medical problems other than the circulation troubles that required the stents, but she bounced back from them all.

Nanci was a helpful confidante to a number of her close relatives and friends who would call her to discuss problems going on in their lives. She was always able to help, using her abilities of thoughtful guidance and, if needed, some straight talk to help the caller see the light. She helped me in this way a thousand times. She loved her talks with her grandchildren on the phone, and could move with the best of them on the dance floor. Nanci was a lover of animals and was devoted to feeding the birds were near our house.

In April 2006 Nanci stood up from the couch and announced that she was not feeling well. In September and early October 2006 she was in a coma-like state in the St. Elizabeth’s Respiratory ICU with a pseudomonas infection in her left lung. The medical personnel had done all they could. But despite these dedicated efforts, the doctors told me she was dying. It was devastating.

Then a surgeon came up with the idea of performing surgery to create a tunnel through her body from under her left armpit to her left lung in order to have a drainage path for the infected fluid. Simple and brilliant. The surgery was done and she began to recover. Those riveting green eyes were open again. She had a shunt in her throat that she could press in order to talk. There were a number of other connections to her little body. She began to write and it started to become legible. Still, no complaining. None.

She was transferred out of the RICU to a special room on another floor at St. Elizabeth’s, and then onto Whittier Rehabilitation Hospital in Haverhill, MA for therapy. She was bound and determined with every fiber of her being to get better. In one of many amazing accomplishments, she walked out to a special mobile facility on the grounds of the hospital for a test to see if she could swallow after they took the shunt out. I heard the medical personal in attendance remark that no patient had ever walked to this mobile facility. But Nanci did, and passed the test beautifully, as beauty does. She worked very hard at her physical therapy with a singular determination to get home to our cats, Max and Sam. And to me too.

She arrived home on November 1, 2006. There were nurses and oxygen tanks and a lot of other medical stuff. She used the oxygen once and sent it back. Nurses continued to come for a few months to change the dressings and take her vitals. After some training by these dedicated nurses, especially one of them, I was able to take over.

She got better, and 2007 was a good year. There was surgery being discussed to close the drainage course. This surgery would involve two surgeons and was no easy deal, but she did not flinch at the idea of undergoing it. The alternative, as she said, was to continue two-a-day dressing changes for the rest of her life. Nanci got back in the swing of things, getting up to a solid 110 pounds, going out for dinner with friends, doing the grocery shopping, attending social gatherings (with those for her grandchildren, Paige and Zach, being by far the most important), and the other activities of everyday life. Although a tough surgery loomed to close the little tunnel in her body, she was doing well and her attitude was great.

Then she started to lose weight in January 2008. In a couple of months the problem was discovered - cancer of the liver. Typical of her stoic demeanor in the face of awful situations she handled this bad news with bravery and determination. She even said that the liver biopsy was not a problem. I doubt many who have had this procedure would agree. Still, in that recovery room, no complaining. None. And, even with a frame made slight from the illness, she still managed to get to her beloved Curves on a number of occasions after this to work out.

She began hormone therapy in April 2008 with a hopeful outlook and a lot of praying by us, and by many others. Radiation and/or chemotherapy could not be done due to her little tunnel. Her weight stayed the same, or decreased a little, and there was some deterioration, but she kept on going, kept on doing. We did the grocery shopping together, and she kept the house in order.

On Saturday, August 9, 2008, she was writing a list for the grocery shopping at around 9 AM. She came out of the bathroom with a level of pain that I had never seen. She rested on the couch and I gave her cold face cloths to apply to her forehead. I called the doctor who said to get her to the ER at St. Joseph’s in Nashua, which she finally agreed to do. When I left her room at about 8 PM that night, she called out, “I love you,” as I was leaving to get home to take care of our cats. “I love you too,” I called back, fully expecting to see her the next day. At her bedside before I left, Nanci’s face looked as beautiful as the day we met. Truly so.

They had to intubate her in the early morning hours of Sunday, August 10 and move her to the ICU. Her sons, Donny and Stephen, daughter-in-law, Susan, her niece Elaine and a good friend, Lisa gathered for what turned out to be the death watch. She never fully awoke. The doctors met with us and, in essence, told us that things just deteriorated inside her little body. All organs either had, or soon would, be failing.

We met, we talked, we cried. I called her New Hampshire friends who came over Sunday night to say goodbye to Nanci. Then on Monday the eleventh, with the guidance of a great nursing staff in the ER, we agreed to let her go. They took her off the respirator and she was gone to God within five minutes.

Then the wake and funeral - a blur. Hundreds came. On the foot stone at her grave at Saint Patrick’s Cemetery in Hudson, NH is written:

ANNE MARIE “NANCI” BUHLMAN
December 29, 1943 to August 11, 2008
BELOVED BY ALL
“ONE DAY AT A TIME”

Most of us say, when things go badly in our lives, “Why me?”.

Nanci would often say, even during the most difficult of times, “Why not me?”

The level of bravery and saintliness that Nanci always displayed is attained by very few. It is because of her suffering, and especially the stoic manner in which she handled it, that I believe she went directly to Heaven. Any purgation that my little saint might have needed occurred here on Earth through much pain and suffering.

I will love you always, Baby Doll.

And, God willing, I will see you again, in Paradise.

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