By Barb Arland-Fye
The Catholic Messenger
VICTOR — Eighty-nine-year-old Verabeth Bricker entered motherhood in 1949 without a clue that she’d still be changing diapers 67 years later. The third of her six children, David, 63, has a developmental disability and requires hands-on care and patience.
It’s fun to get away, even if the retreat is a quarter-mile from home near Victor, Iowa. That’s the thought of Denise Bricker, left; her brother, David Bricker; Anna Upah, a home health worker; and Verabeth Bricker, mother of Denise and David. The three women pictured are “moms” to David, who lives with a developmental disability.
As she stands in David’s bedroom looking toward a row of shelves with disposable diapers, her biggest concern is that the brand of diapers she used to purchase is no longer available. She’s long past the stage of asking God, “Why me?” The thought did cross her mind when her youngest child, Kris, also was born with a significant developmental disability (he died in 2008 at age 48) and when her only daughter, Denise, was diagnosed with a learning disability.
But for years Verabeth, a devout Catholic, has focused on mothering David and Kris (until his death) with the help of Denise and Anna Upah, a home health worker and guardian angel in the Bricker household. Anna arrived not long after Verabeth’s husband, Dean, died in 2002.
“I don’t know what we’d do without Anna,” Verabeth says. “She calls out to David, ‘Hi, Boss!’ ‘What do you want Boss?’ That’s his best friend. She makes him feel important. She goes to all of his doctor’s appointments.” David’s vocabulary has improved immensely since Anna’s arrival, his mother adds. “I don’t talk with him as if he’s a baby,” Anna says. “He’s 63. I talk to him like he’s a 63-year-old. He has a lot of kid habits. But he’s an adult.”
Denise, who works part-time at a lawyer’s office, helps take care of her brother when Anna is off work. “I think God put me on this earth to help Mom and my two brothers (David and Kris),” Denise says. “When we lost Kris, it was like losing my own child.”
On a cool, overcast Thursday afternoon Verabeth, David, Anna and Denise get into two separate golf carts — David has been taught how to operate his own — and drive to the family’s retreat a quarter-mile down the road.
With help from other family members, along with Anna and a district forester, Verabeth established the “Bricker Wetland Natural Prairie and Forest” on the 160-acre family farm in western Iowa County. “This is a dream come true,” says Verabeth. “I wanted to have a natural safe haven for my children and myself to enjoy together for years to come.”
The retreat includes a partially enclosed aluminum shelter set on a concrete pad and is a great rallying point for family get-togethers. “We have a lot of outings out here,” Verabeth says. David loves the retreat and takes great joy in driving his golf cart back and forth, hours at a time in good weather.
David Bricker gathers his favorite things: a toy tractor, his beloved teddy bear and another stuffed animal he wraps around his neck at his home near Victor, Iowa. David, who has a developmental disability, lives with his mom, Verabeth Bricker, and his sister, Denise Bricker. They take care of him, along with home health worker Anna Upah.
Back at the house, Anna demonstrates what David will do next when he returns to his bedroom filled with stuffed animals. She picks up a toy tractor in one hand, tucks a well-worn teddy bear under the other arm and wraps a curved stuffed animal around her neck. These were Kris’ toys. David enters the room and does exactly what Anna predicted. The “moms” know David’s habits in their sleep. They follow rules and procedures that David established as a way to cope with life.
Verabeth’s coping skills include playing the organ at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Marengo (for the last 75 years!) and at St. Bridget Catholic Church in Victor for the past 20 years. A piano and organ sit side by side in her house of many rooms, added on over the last 68 years. “When I’m down, I just pound the keys. I really like ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters.”
She sees a spiritual director monthly at Prairiewoods in Hiawatha, Iowa, taking Denise and David with her in a second-hand recreational vehicle that has many miles and years on it. It is David’s sanctuary on wheels. Verabeth, a retired nurse who earned her master’s degree in 1994, also is a voracious reader of spiritual books, magazines, newspapers and devotions. They sustain her sense of hope.
Mothering can be exhausting, but the three moms wouldn’t give it up for the world. “I am immersed in this family. I take care of all of them,” says Anna, who is married and has two grown children of her own. That love is reciprocated.
This past Lent, Anna decided that instead of giving up something she would recognize someone important in her life. That “someone” is the Bricker family. “So many times I’d come here thinking, ‘I’m at the end of my rope and they’d listen. It’s not just been about their family. There have been a lot of tears shed at that table,” Anna says, nodding toward the dining room table.
Kurt, the fifth of Verabeth and Dean’s six children, admires his mom for her perseverance and her faith. “I know it was tough on her and dad. It was kind of tough on me growing up because it seemed like all the attention was put on Dave and Denise and Kris.
“But everything is OK. It was a very difficult task, what she did. I take my hat off to her,” added Kurt, a mail carrier who is married with grown children. He stops by the house twice a day to do farm chores. Of his upbringing, he says, “I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.”
Years ago, when David was still a child, a doctor recommended that Verabeth consider sending him to a residential institution. She visited the place and observed children lined up, getting their heads washed. It reminded her of an assembly line. “He’s my son, and I love him,” Verabeth says. “This is his home; this is where he’s loved.”
