Trying to hold on:

This afternoon, Ruth and I drove down to Norwalk to spend some time with a woman whose husband died a couple of days ago. The woman's Mother is a cousin of Ruth's by Ruth's first marriage. I've met the Mother and wife several times and they are very unassuming, warm, generous women. The funeral is this Tuesday, and Ruth and I will be in Vegas.. be back late Saturday night, so someone else will have to take care of the coffee. We really wanted to spend some time with the family, and this afternoon was the only time that worked for everyone.

When we got to the apartment, there were several family members there, and several more who arrived later. As the wife talked about her husband, everyone settled in. She said that just last week, her husband was asking why she didn't have her toe nails done, when she had her fingernails done. She told her husband that she didn't have the money to do her toenails. She had barely enough to do her fingernails. Her husband had been sick for a long time, so the money was very tight. But, he really wanted his wife to get her toe nails done. He kept asking her "Why do you always get them done in red,?" and she told him, "That's the way I like them." "Why don't you have them do them in black, next time?" She'd never heard of anyone having their toe nails done in black, but it was a moot point, as she didn't have the money to have them done.

Yesterday, she went to have her nails done and remembering how much her husband wanted her to have her toe nails done, she decided to spend the money and do them. She said, "I was going to have them done in black, because that's what Tom wanted, but he can't see them, so I went ahead and had them done in red." It was good to hear her laugh.

As she talked about her husband, she said that he was concerned about what would happen to her when he died. He was on a pension, and she wouldn't get a "Widow's pension," unless she was over 60 when he died. She thinks that he was really trying to hold on until she reached 60. He was in an enormous amount of pain, and the medication was very expensive, so he tried to get by on Tylenol as best he could. When the care giver came in to see him two mornings ago, she discovered that he had died in his sleep. Three weeks short of his wife's 60th birthday.

He tried holding on as long as he could so that she'd get that pension. But, he couldn't quite make it.

There are every day stories of courage all around us.

But, she knows that she will be allright.

Jerry