Oh, Death of Thanksgivings Past

Ralph Stanley Singing

O, Death
O, Death

Won't you spare me over til another year

(reprint from past Thanksgivings)

The title pretty well sums it up.
I do not wish to lose my father. He has an abdominal aneurysm and the medics are debating whether to operate based on the strength of his heart. Based on the size of the aneurysm, there should be an operation.

It has been a long two years. Last year he was so sick from pneumonia he could not walk to my car to be driven to the hospital. Well, he recovered well and we were soon laughing about jet-age diuretics and how fast they work. My mother had an angioplasty and a stent procedure.
Afterwards I told her that she had too much food around with trans fats. She laughed and said, "It's his lungs, not his heart, that's the problem." "It's not dad I'm talking about." I said.

 So Thanksgiving approaches. There's a jar of gravy with partially hydrogenated molecules waiting for me. I'm picking up the turkey on Wednesday, taking it to their place 60 miles north and going to the doctor's with my father. Will return Thursday early to pop turkey into oven. And I will worry.
I will have to rely on my mother until I return on Thursday.
Last year when cleaning the recessed lighting in the kitchen I discovered what looked like minute pieces of beef jerky on the ceiling. Well, they were indeed beef. My mother's pressure cooker exploded some months before. She no longer uses it.
I do not wish to lose them. We have faced death before. They have been ill. I have been ill. My daughter had been ill many times in the past, God willing, not so in the present and future.

When we first brushed up against Death, he cut us to the quick with a scowl and we huddled in bed, grasping each other like we'd never let go again and crying ourselves to exhaustion. I guess one never gets used to it, but you become bolder and less fearful. I do not wish to lose them. We've only gotten to like each other the last few weeks. We are more like old friends. (Old crotchety friends, true.)

Death has no dominion in the kingdom of Faith.

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