The other bits and pieces from 'the home'

[susandennis]

So, last week, we were in the dining room and Della Jo said 'you can look up stuff on your computer, can't you?' And I said 'sure!' What do you need to know? And Della Jo said 'I want the words to The Old Rugged Cross.' And I started... 'On a hill far away, stood and old rugged cross, an emblem of suffering and pain.....' I gave them three stanzas and they were pretty impressed.

And then they started throwing out hymn names to see what else I knew. I did pretty well. If it is an old Baptist hymn, or a recorded on a 45 during between 1955 and 1967, or on Broadway during those same years, I can pretty much give you all the verses. I cannot carry a tune in a bucket. But I do know the words.

When we were kids and used to take car trips, we sang. Daddy had a beautiful voice and Mom was good on harmony and I knew all the words. This got me the front seat because Daddy could ready my lips with one eye while keeping the other one on the road. We'd sing the standards - Casey Would Waltz with the Strawberry Blond, and Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer True, and camp songs - Do Your Ears Hang Low... And then we'd do the Baptist hymns and then we'd do Broadway and then we'd start all over again. The words have never left me. I keep them in a part of my brain that apparently I don't need for anything else.

The ladies at Mom's table were pretty darned impressed. Since I can't sing and we were at the dinner table, I only gave them the words. Laura said I was a Lyric Savant. I like that.

When Daddy retired, he and Mom moved to Charleston. They bonded instantly with their next door neighbors. Louise and Howard and Mom and Dad were all born in the same year and annually celebrated birthdays and holidays and Summer and whatever else they could find. They lived side by side for 10 years. Mom and Dad moved to 'the home' and then about a year later Louise and Howard did, too. Daddy died. Then last year Louise died. This morning, Howard died. I talked to Mom this afternoon and she said 'I'm the last one. Guess it's up to me to turn the lights out.'

Polly and Mom and I were talking about Howard on Saturday - Polly had just been over there with the hospice worker - Howard had spent Thanksgiving with his daughter and son and had come home early because he was just in too much pain. Polly said that there was nothing they could do but fill him with morphine and hope he didn't last long. She said that he was ready for what they call, over in the nursing wing, a celestial discharge. He got it today.