Hand of a Child

Posted on 2011/03/01 by JimR, Chaplain

I have a few lucid memories of when I was quite young.  My grand daddy lived just a short walk across the ditch to the tobacco barns and chicken pen, then the house.  They lived in an old clapboard house. 

Some of my memories of my grand dad was to watching him shave in front of a mirror by the back door.  I watched, as he cut his gray whiskers away from his face more than once.  He wore wire frame glasses, which I now have.  They are frail looking, but I open them up and can still imagine them on his face.

My grand dad and I would go for a walks or just sit in a swing on the front porch and talk.  I remember one day observing my young five year old hand against his.  There I was.  This young tow headed boy with fresh smooth skin on my hand.  I placed it next to his weather beaten hand.  He had endured many days in the fields on the farm plowing, harvesting and tending to the animals.  His nails were rough edged.  Even with that his hand was gentle to run it across the back of my head when he’d tell me I was special to him.  Wrinkles on the back of his hand made me ponder would mine look like that when I got older.

Now that I’m sixty, I have two grand daughters.  One is seven and the other has a birthday coming up in July.  She’ll be three.  I sometimes look at my now aged hand and see my grand dad’s hand.  But there’s nothing in them.  I cannot hold my grand daughters’ hands.  The older lives close by, but she may as well live the same distance away as the other.  I miss them.  I have no young fresh skinned hand in mine while we walk or sit in the swing.

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A Visit to the Dermatologist

Posted on 2011/02/14 by JimR, Chaplain

I’m sixty years old now.  I’m told I don’t look it.  I’m told that I have an attractive face, but attracted by what?  I have old age spots.  Spots that look like cancer.  Also there are wrinkles all over my face when I laugh that makes me look like a Sharpei.  I’m bald, but I like what I have left longer than most peoples.  Even some women’s hair length.  Nothing Ben Franklinish, though. 

Anyway, I felt I needed a couple of spots looked at.  There was one on each temple.  Of course I get there, they check me in and put me in the brightly lit exam room and take my information down and tell me the doc will be in shortly.  Oh, and they told me to take my shirt off.  Why in hell would they tell me that?  I just wanted my face looked at.  Oh well. 

In comes the doc.  All of them used to work at the hospital where I work.  So I know something about them already.  No surprises.  Dr Murphy starts looking my head over and points out several “old age” spots of which included the two I was concerned about.  Drats.  Old age spots, my ass.  Then he gets out that canister thing upon which I realize this contraption is a container for freezing these spots on my head.  He checks it against his hand, so i think this will be okay.  Once he proceeded to “zap” each of these spots I find that piercing my head with 20 penny nails might be a better option.  That freezing stuff hurts, man.  When he got done he counted them all and told the assistant he had frozen thirteen spots. 

The muscles on my scalp were pulsating by now.  If you’ve ever had your skin crawl, mine was trying to escape my head entirely thinking this was the end and needed to flee the body completely. 

But that wasn’t all.  He proceeded to look at the upper part of my body and he seemed to be satisfied, but then he started looking through my scalp and had an “ah ha” moment.  He seemed to think he’d found a cancer in my left sideburn.  This meant a shave biopsy.  Crap.

The assistant was ordered to inject lidocaine in the area for the biopsy.  I figured this couldn’t be as bad as when the ENT doc injected the same drug into my ear canal years ago to insert a tube for draining my inner ear.  But let me tell you something.  Damn, that hurt.  Almost immediately the assistant started poking around the site asking did I feel anything.  Hell yeah!  Which was the word for “gimme some more injections” to her.  So she gave me more.  All I could hope for was I didn’t eventually go completely numb on the left side of my face and start drooling or something.  Thank goodness my face became numb without drooling. 

The doc comes back in and in a few seconds shaves a part of the skin off and announces he’s done and will let me know the results in around eight days or so.  I’m so relieved.

I’m ready for Flounders.  It’s a restaurant close by with some very good seafood.  I just hope I can taste it.

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Visiting My Friend

Posted on 2011/02/02 by JimR, Chaplain

I’ve had something on my mind since visiting with a friend yesterday.  You might wonder what this has to do with Living Small.  It has everything to do with it.  I grew up in a community that was tight.  I guess being related to more than half the neighborhood may have precipitated that closeness, but still. . .

I remember several people in Small that were found to have cancer. That was a death sentence for sure back in the fifties an sixties.  You got a diagnosis and some treatment, but at some point the doctors would just send them home and hoped for a peaceful, comfortable end as much as possible.  No matter who it was, the neighborhood would prepare food for the family and sit with the sick one day and night until the passing.  My mom and grand mother, like others would take a turn at spending the day or night with them.  The person wasn’t given home nursing care or hospice care like today.  Most people I knew didn’t have the money for paid caretakers to come in.  Dr. Bonner was our local doctor in Aurora.  He would make house calls.  I suppose he might go visit the sick one, but mostly to check to see that they were comfortable as much as could be.  One of those people was my step-grandfather’s first wife.  She had brain cancer.  She lingered for a while, but the house nor she was ever left without someone to clean, cook and take care of her and Jamie.  It’s touching to think of it now.  There’s no one that would do that now where I lived.

Fast forward to today.  I worked with Tracy.  She is the wife of my friend.  She was always bubbly and ready to help with my computer woes back years ago.  I was working in the business office when I met her and later went to work in the same department as she.  Tracy taught me the finer points of computer fixes.  Anyway, she was married to Jim, who was an active duty Marine at the time.  He retired not long after I met him.  They’ve been married for several years and made it through thick and thin, but this trial has a certain verdict and they are both taking this trial with determination and certainty that Jim is going to be alright at the end of all this suffering.

I walked into his room in Onslow Memorial Hospital and he looked at me like “wow”.  He had seen someone he had not been expecting.  We sat and talked for some time.  I listened mostly.  He’d tear up on occasion when he would describe the love he and Tracy had and the support of his family, although they live in Nebraska.  He said he wasn’t going to leave this life till he had done what he was put here for and he trusted Jesus to take him only after he had accomplished his task.  He seemed strong-willed and fighting this cancer that has all but overcome him.  I felt touched by his fortitude to be a fighter, even at 104 pounds.  I pray that God take note of this man and have mercy on him and let this Marine into His arms when the time comes.

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Hello world!

Posted on 2011/01/26 by JimR, Chaplain

Life always has interesting subjects.  That not only applies to stories, but people who commit themselves to create such stories.  Just one quick one to perk your interest. 

I worked contruction work right out of high school.  I had no other skills other than working on a farm.  So I worked in a radial arm saw shop with my dad and his side kick Shorty Henderson.  Shorty was a good man, but he had a hankering for ‘shine.  Him and his cousin Leedy could put down some of that water clear coma inducing liquid.  Smoooooooth was the word I would hear them say, describing the last batch.  Of course they still smelled of alcohol when they’d come to work.  And the stories they could tell with grins from ear to ear.

Our “shack” was the hold up point for the lunch crowd.  Most of them were a mix of carpenters and heavy equipment operators.  One operator I remember for telling the biggest tales you’d ever heard.  Some of them were the ones about snakes so big their head would be going into the woods on one side of the road as their tail came out of the woods on the opposite side of the road or deer with racks of horns they could only run fire lanes through the woods.

So, come on back when you get the time.  Maybe you’ll see something you haven’t read.  I’m sure I’ll have something to write about.

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