Everybody has a story
"It's a learning experience."
That's how Joyce Radchenko, who recently received a special gift from students at North Battleford's McKitrick School, looks at life.
A thoughtfully crafted Bristol-board sized thank you card recently made its way to 83-year-old Radchenko for the many mittens she has knitted for kids in need. In this case, it was McKitrick School, but her mittens have been given to children throughout the community and its many schools, wherever there has been a need.
Joyce says she knits them, but credits fellow volunteer Gwen Cave for seeing they get where they need to go, whether that's to local schools or to relief organizations.
Over the years, word has spread throughout the community about her knitting, she says. She doesn't even have to purchase wool herself anymore. Fellow Lutheran Church members, neighbours, friends and even people she's never met donate their spare, leftover or unused knitting wool for her projects.
"If there is just a little bit of a particular kind, she works it in as a decorative stripe - musn't let anything go to waste!" says her daughter ViviAnn.
While Joyce Radchenko's handiwork is well-known in the Battlefords, it is also appreciated, quite literally, around the world. Some of that donated wool is used to make baby sweaters, and many of these she donates to world relief efforts by the Lutheran Church. She also contributes to the making of quilts and layettes (newborn clothing, blankets and diapers) along with other volunteers of the Zion Lutheran Church in North Battleford.
Joyce says she has always knitted, and her daughter ViviAnn says she is the only person she knows who can knit, watch television and read at the same time.
"It's true," laughs her mother.
But knitting became more than a hobby when she was faced with a life-changing event that saw her unable to leave her house for a period of three years.
She was one of many spouses who have found themselves caregivers to a life mate stricken by Alzheimer's disease.
She and her husband Alex were married in 1950. They farmed in the Bjelde Creek area. During that time they were active in the community and Joyce wrote local news reports and a column called "The Way I See It" for the News-Optimist for many years. She laughs that her dog Poochie was even more well-remembered for the column than she was.
They raised three daughters, ViviAnn and Colleen who still reside locally, and Karen who lives in Lethbridge, Alta.
In 1978 they retired to a house in North Battleford and their nephew Roland and his wife Carol are now on the Bjelde Creek farm.
Joyce says her husband, Alex, was a soldier, and as the Alzheimer's disease advanced, he began to become afraid of lights and noises. The fear of wartime came back to him and held him in its grip.
She once left the house for a half hour to take communion, she said, and came back to find him crying because she'd gone.
She vowed, "I'll never leave you again."
And for three years she stayed in the house with him, never leaving because it upset him too much. ViviAnn and Colleen did all the grocery shopping, paid the bills and helped with the house upkeep. Once a week, ViviAnn went to the library and borrowed 15 books for her mother - and she read them all.
Becoming shut in within your own home for three years may be a sacrifice some couldn't face, but Joyce says, "Different people have different ways to cope."
It also helps to have family support and good neighbours, she says.
Joyce's days were filled with caring for Alex, knitting and reading. Joyce enjoys reading almost anything, and during those days came to enjoy fictional novels - a way of looking outside to see how other people might be living.
Although Alex wasn't acting himself, he was still the same person, she says, still the man she married and loved.
"You live and learn," she says.
She found she could lessen his stress by entering into his world, setting an extra place at the table for his late mother when he believed she was visiting, not frustrating him trying to pull him back into the real world, because he was happy when he believed his mother visited.
"It was a good day when 'Mom' was there," she says.
She even accepted the fact that, at medication time, Alex saw her as a wartime enemy. He would accept his medication from a neighbour kind enough to help, but not from her.
She told herself, "A lot of people have it much worse."
Alex never became violent the way some Alzheimer's patients do. She counts herself fortunate.
A sense of humour also helped Joyce cope.
"God gave us a funny bone," she says. "He must have meant for it to be used."
One incident still makes her laugh. Alex had slipped out of his wheelchair. She was unable to get him back in and was wishing someone would come along and help her. A knock came at the door. It was an old friend dropping by, with a boyfriend Joyce had never met - and who probably didn't know what to expect. She threw open the door, exclaiming, "A man! A man! At last, a man!"
The time eventually came when was it was too difficult physically for Joyce to care for him at home. Ironically, says Joyce, the day she had to call an ambulance for him, with him leaving their home by the front door for the last time, was the same day she had carpenters at the back door building a ramp for his use, courtesy of his entitlements as a veteran.
Alex was a resident of River Heights Lodge for a few months before he passed away in 2004.
These days, Joyce is still in her own home, continues the penchant for knitting for the needs that she nurtured while caring for Alex, and she's back out in the community, going to church and doing volunteer work - although limited by some difficulty walking after an injury.
She helps with the hosting of a social event once a week for residents of Saskatchewan Hospital North Battleford and the Battlefords Regional Care Centre held at Zion Church by the Lutheran Open Door organization. The volunteer group was awarded with one of the first ever Champions of Mental Health Awards, presented by the North Battleford branch of the Registered Psychiatric Nurses of Saskatchewan.
She also helps pack hampers for the Midwest Food Resources Fresh Food Boxes program.
"A lot of seniors volunteer there," she says.
It is a non-profit program that buys food and supplies in bulk and passes the savings on to its customers.
And when she is not volunteering somewhere, Joyce can be found at home knitting, reading and watching television - all at the same time.
"Live and learn," she says.
