Elizabeth Ann Holden

ELIZABETH ANN HOLDEN, age 51, passed away November 6th, 2011 at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Beaumont, Texas. She was born January 20th, 1960, the fifth of six children to Richard and Helen Holden, in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Elizabeth was a special needs individual who loved her decks of cards, blocks, puzzles, music and watching sports. She lived the last 16 years of her life at Carnation House in Beaumont, where she was treated with respect, love and much patience and understanding by the staff members there.

Elizabeth is preceded in death by her sister, Carol Ann Holden Ames and her parents, Richard Noel Holden and Helen Groh Holden. She is survived by her siblings, Mary Elizabeth Holden, Thomas Edward Holden, Martha Lynn Strickland and Patricia Jane Stull, as well as numerous aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews and her beloved caregivers from Beaumont, Deandrea Drake, Carolyn Owens and Shirley Martin.

A memorial service celebrating Elizabeth's life, was held at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 19th, 2011 in the Memorial Oaks Cemetery Mausoleum Chapel located behind the red brick funeral home. A graveside service followed.

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Growing up with our sister Liz was an adventure. She was a small bundle of energy and strength with a will of steel. People have often asked me how we understood her needs since she had no language skills and never spoke a single word, but all who knew Liz knew that she could communicate very clearly her likes and dislikes. There were hand motions and noises that expressed happiness or dissatisfaction and if you failed to catch on to the dissatisfaction, she could use that small wiry body to physically help you figure it out.

Liz had her pleasures in life and they were simple but strong. She loved to watch football and baseball and marching bands and would seem to be cheering them on. She liked to go outside and watch the neighbor kids play – riding bikes, playing ball or chase. She loved to see people in motion. She loved her puzzles and her blocks but above all she loved her cards. We never knew what Liz was thinking when she shuffled her cards. She would have a large bucket of several mixed decks and she would sort through them at lightning speed with laserlike concentration, picking them up, sorting, saving this one, discarding that. She also loved to eat.

One of my responsibilities was to feed her dinner every night. To a 12 year old this meal of soup and vegetables and applesauce seemed to go on forever, because Liz could really eat. One day it hit me – she could do puzzles and stack blocks and sort cards… there was nothing wrong with her motor skills. Why was I feeding her? I gave her a few bites with an empty spoon to see what would happen and she snatched that spoon from me and gave me one of her famous dirty looks, and started feeding herself.

Liz attended a small school in Corpus Christi that served a group of about a dozen handicapped. Patti, who is just a year younger than Liz, often spent the day at Liz’s school when she was not yet school age – having fun as the teacher’s helper.

Once we moved to Houston one of Liz’s favorite pastimes was tearing pages from the yellow page phone books and stamp catalogs. All our neighbors saved their phone books and we gathered stamp catalogs by the hundreds so that each day during her rest time she could listen to her records and tear her pages. Liz loved music and although many things in her path could get damaged or destroyed, never her records and her record player. She loved a lot of the popular songs of that time, “Respect” by Aretha, “Yellow Submarine” by the Beatles and most of all “I’m Henry the 8th I am” by Hermann’s Hermits. Patti and I would often sit on the bathroom counter and sing that song to her during her bath time and she would giggle and laugh and demand verse after verse.

It was always hard to know how much Liz understood, because she could not speak. But her intelligence was never a question. She had the phone books she was allowed to tear up but woe to the sibling that left a school or library book where she might see it. There was many a time we would hunt high and low for a book only to find the gutted cover in her room. She would bring the empty cover of her phone book into the den, slip the forbidden book inside the cover and run to her room with it. If you saw her and followed, she would immediately push the book behind her back and give you the crab claw – the hand motion that meant “get out of my space”.

And speaking of space, Liz was pretty particular about that. She had spots that were hers and she was not interested in sharing and a prolonged battle could endure if you tried to get her to share. When we would first come to visit her in Carnation house her housemates would try to create a little excitement. Liz had a loveseat she sat on and it was hers and not to be shared. Some of her roommates would steer us to that loveseat and try to get us to sit down, grinning and excited at the reaction they knew would follow. Alas for them we were wise to it and didn't take the bait. But it was clear they understood each other and their sense of playfulness was a delight to see.

Liz lived at home with my mother until she was about 35 yrs old. At that time it became clear we needed to find a long term living solution for her. We tried several homes who only kept her for a day or so and said she was too difficult, they couldn't keep her. And then we found Carnation House. The people there devised the most detailed plans to keep Liz in compliance with all the rules and regulations of the state that were required for her to keep her residency. Many of them we all knew she would never comply with but as long as there was a plan in place the state was happy. A good example was the hearing test. There was no way Liz was going to wear those headphones– they would quickly be flung across the room before they were even halfway on. So the plan was to get her first to sit at the table with another person, then to get her to sit and leave the headphones on the table (this was a bigger challenge than you might think – she liked all surfaces clear and worked hard to keep them that way), then to get her to touch them, then hold them, then wear them. I doubt in 15 years she ever wore them but the staff’s willingness to develop these kinds of minute milestones allowed her to stay in Carnation House, the place that was home to her.

The care and love she received over the years at Carnation House cannot even be expressed in words – truly many of those wonderful people became family – treasured by us all. In the last few years as her health rapidly declined and her care became more and more demanding, they continued to do everything they could to keep her there, in a comfortable, secure place. When she had to be hospitalized they formed a chain of care, making sure that someone she knew and trusted was with her at all times during her hospital stay.

Liz was one of a kind – a small dynamo my mother called “Little Bit” and a training ground for every new houseparent or case manager that came along. She would allow the quickest of hugs and a kiss on the head but she always set the ground rules and everyone around her complied. We will never know just how much Liz knew or understood about what was going on around her but we feel sure she felt the love that we all had for her. She was a special person who taught us all so much and touched our lives in more ways than we can express.