Yesterday after dropping granddaughter, Janna, off at work, I stopped by Aldis for a couple of things. It was a nasty, rainy day. While inside there came a downpour so I waited til it was over so I could run between the raindrops.
After the rain let up, I got my stuff into the car and as I backed out noticed an older gentleman having trouble getting the basket attached to his walker. I stopped, rolled down the window to ask if he could use any help but he was oblivious to anything around him and got it fixed before I could get out to help. He was using oxygen and had set the tank down on the ground til he could get done. The tank was put into the basket when it was fixed and all that effort barely left him enough strength to pull the back door of the car down. Breathing problems are bad enough but bad weather makes them so much worse.
Seeing him struggle took me back to watching our father with his oxygen for the last 6 years of his life after his lung cancer surgery. The cancer was removed but there is no cure for emphysema. Lung cancer is terrible but I think emphysema is worse and Dad had both. His tank was strapped to one of those little luggage carriers on wheels that went everywhere he went. He thought fanning him with a magazine helped him get more air, would even get agitated when he thought we weren't fanning him fast enough. He didn't realize his whole body was screaming for the air that wasn't getting out of those diseased lungs.
Just thinking about all this smothers me. Why am I going over this then? -seeing that man yesterday in the parking lot. The site has been with me since.
My dad smoked a good part of his life and I despise smoking. Oh, he stopped years before but not soon enough and I'm sure there were more factors that contributed to his lung disease in the places he worked.
Even as I write this, there is news rolling across the tv screen about a woman who has died from a fire in her apartment that was caused by smoking while she was on oxygen. She was 75 years old, only one year older than me and Dad was only 72.
And again-why am I bringing all this up-I HATE, HATE smoking and have been on a stop smoking campaign for a long time. My children smoke, my grandchildren smoke, though they saw what suffering it caused Dad.
He was in the hospital the last several weeks of his life. All the kids and grandkids came to visit him the night after he had been resuscitated and each of us got to see him and talk with him. He had something to say to each. A few days later, he was gone.
The ointment from "The Alabaster Box" is not as I intended when this was begun but this is how it came out. I'm pretty sure it is what Dad would have me tell you, what he did tell us all-that flashback yesterday just hit me at a bad time on a nasty, rainy day when an old man had barely enough energy to pick up his oxygen tank off the ground to place it in the basket of his walker and close his car door.
God bless you
Carolyn Wainscott
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I just took this of old set of photos of Dad and Grandfather that we never knew
Here he is a few years before he died. He was always a snapper dresser.
Mom and Dad before they were married. She is only 16 here, he was 20. He was her heartthrob-you can see why. Snazzy dresser even then.
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