The Superior Express -

Many of the elderly frail ones die in the winter time. Grandpa A. J. always said, “If I can make it through March, I can live another year.” There were five deaths all in their eighties in one week.

Rose, 83, has had Alzheimer’s disease and has been absent from us for several years already, wandering around in her body, confused and lost. Now she is free, free to fly over her dear farm and check on her chickens and baby calves, and see the garden spot now grown up to weeds. Her roses are still blooming bravely by the porch. She catches a whiff of their fragrance on the breeze. Now she can remember the happy times and not be confused any longer. When Rose was our young neighbor, and I was a child, my mother and I would visit her farm home. She and her sister and mother would give us lovely flowers and fruit to pick. Later, she quilted with Mom’s Ladies Aid. I always wonder how the nursing aides treat these old folks. Do they get any respect? Each has lived a beautiful long lifetime, before age and disease took over their body.

Austin was 88, barely visible behind the steering wheel of his small white car. I had just met him driving around last week, a tiny shrunken man smiling at you from behind thick, thick glasses. He had managed to stay out of the nursing home. Do the yountg ones know of his education, his serving his country in the Great War, his master’s degree in music from New York City’s Columbia University, his lifetime of teaching music to young people? It is a fitting tribute at his funeral, to have a fine organist and good friend, accompanying the young professional singer. His strong confident voice soars out over the congregation, declaring along with Austin, “It is Well With my Soul.” Austin smiles down proudly at the singer, one of his own students, and then turns contentedly to meet his wife of 60 years, who traveled ahead of him just last year. Perhaps he can find an angelic choir to direct up there. Farewell, friend.

Honor left this week also. At age 94, some might have said, “I didn’t even know she was still alive.” Though she lived at Heritage the past few years, she was always smiling, happy and witty. She usually had a bow in her hair, and was glad to see you. In her younger years she worked as a nurse with Dr. Obert. She was always standing by with medicine in hand, knowing what he was going to prescribe. An office call usually cost $4.00, which included an examination, some advice from both of them, and some sample medicine out of his drawer, or perhaps a shot. Honor helped Doc deliver our last three children. We remember both of them with respect. They don’t make them like that anymore.