October 5, 2013
My nephew gave me excerpts from his Chinese 101 over ice cream. He is studying Anthropology in his Social Studies class as well and provided me with details about "Lucy" that I was clearly unaware of. Don't ask me about her now because I have slept since that conversation. I retain about as much as a housefly these days. I have to make up most of what I discuss during a dinner party and hope that the other guests are just as senile or gullible.
Several Hospice stories came to light as a friend asked me about volunteering. He is spending his remaining years, considering his trepidation over the idea he may die someday. A short-term patient, let's call her Stella, whom I sat with while volunteering with Hospice, suffering from bladder cancer came immediately to mind. I had to phone her up, prior to my approaching her mobile home, settled in the woods out in the boonies of Jefferson County, and shout my impending arrival. She sported a shotgun and was gainfully unpredictable. So thin, her sweatpants flew to the floor with a breeze emitting from the microwave. She was a "League of One's Own" professional baseball player while the men were rallied off to war. A massive television blared in the living room the size of a business card, while she smoked, the tar seeping into the kitchen cabinets, saturated towels hanging from the rail, even the spider webs collected the nasty, sticky substance. Stella was one of my favorites and obviously popular, with a packed funeral service not too many months after I began to visit with her. They brought her gun, along with a series of photos she saved, of herself in uniform, playing ball and traveling with her teammates.
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