My Veterans

Veterans’ Day 2020 is a long way from the end of World War II in 1945.  That was a very significant time in my young life.  I was born just before the war ended.  I was 7 months old before I met my father who had been serving in the Army in France.  Today I am thinking about my family members who served.

My Dad worked in a grocery store as a butcher prior to the war.  After being drafted and going through basic training, he was viewed as having leadership potential and was sent to Officers’ Candidate School. While in the military, he tripped a mine, but other than a ruptured eardrum, he was not hurt.  He told me that the day I was born was the last day anyone actually shot at him.  He came out of the Army as a 1^st Lieutenant, and this gave him a leg-up in job hunting after the war.  He worked for a time at Wurlitzer, a company that made juke boxes, and then began working for American Standard as the foreman in the core room.  He later moved and ended up as the production manager in a small business. He spent his life as a “blue collar” worker but always in management positions within the factory.

My Dad’s brother Roy was a conscientious objector, so he went in the military as a medic.  He was stationed on a hospital ship in the Pacific and saw some pretty awful things.  He had one experience that caused him to realize that he could kill someone if he needed to do so.  Coming out of the Army, he used the GI bill to go to college.  He became an engineer specializing in cooling systems.  I knew he traveled all over the world in the early 1950s, a time when such travel wasn’t typical.  Near the end of his 91 year-long life, he confessed that he had been working on cooling systems for nuclear reactors and couldn’t really admit that or talk about it.  He never married or had children.  I was his only niece and was probably closer to him than the nephews were.  He believed having to be in the military had negatively impacted my Dad’s life and earning potential, so in later years, he would send Dad large sums of money.  Dad would turn around and donate it somewhere.  This annoyed Uncle Roy.

My mother had three brothers, all of whom served during WWII.  The oldest brother Frank was already married and had a child when he left for Europe.  He was wounded by a German sniper, had a metal plate placed in his elbow, and recovered in England, before being sent back to the states.  In his absence, his wife had an affair with her boss.  She left Uncle Frank, divorced him, and took their son with her.  He tried to keep up with his son initially, although they were living in another state, but eventually he gave up.  He remarried, but never had another child. I don’t remember his exact career path, but he ended up as a Family Court Clerk.

Mom’s brother Chuck was my Dad’s best friend when they were young men.  That is how my parents met.  Chuck also served in Europe.  When he came home, he had a fairly short career as a fireman, but then went back into the military in the Air Force.  He made a life-time career of this, so he was around the least of my uncles as I grew up.  He sometimes sent letters and photos of places he was stationed.  He was in Alaska in the 50s and was once stationed at the Pentagon.  He was married but had no children.  He died unexpectedly at the age of 50 as a Lieutenant Colonel and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.  I have visited his grave there.

Mom’s youngest brother Art was in north Africa during the war and contracted malaria.  He had some bouts with this after the war.  He used the GI bill to attend college and law school.  He married and was into a promising career as a lawyer when his young daughter died of cancer.  He went through several disastrous years of grief and not working.  His wife supported them for a time.  Eventually, he pulled himself out of this time of despair and became a college professor.  He structured one of the first paralegal programs for a junior college.  He had always been a heavy smoker and died of lung cancer at about the age of 60.

In retrospect, I can see ways in which military service benefited some family members and had a negative impact on the lives of others.  No one talked about PTSD back then, but I suspect they all had it.  My parents said that after the war, they went to a movie together.  There was a scene at a party, that abruptly went into a war scene with guns blazing.  My Dad flattened himself on the floor of the theater and was shaking so badly that they left the movie.

None of these wonderful men are living now.  I have fond memories of all of them.  My uncles were very kind and encouraging to me.  Immediately after the war, all of the men I have mentioned except Uncle Roy were living with my maternal grandparents.  I was the little princess in the house, and my wish was their command.  I was spoiled rotten.  My mother thought she would never straighten me out.  Some of my first words were also their “colorful” language, but there was a great deal of mutual affection with all of these guys.  Uncle Chuck gave me anything I asked for, Uncle Art taught me to tell my mother I was “standing on my constitutional rights” if she scolded me, Uncle Frank was tallest and would bump my head on the ceiling….I called him Uncle Bink, and Uncle Roy and I developed a life-long secret word with which we greeted and admonished each other.  My Dad was a sometimes harsh and difficult man, but I loved him.  We butted heads right to the end, but we appreciated each other.

I am grateful they all made it home in 1945!

Tell-tale Pain

Now and then, an event in my past life comes to mind, and I have no idea why.  This morning, I thought about a patient I took care of long ago.  I think he was in his 50s or 60s.  I don’t remember his name, but I think he was Scottish as he had a plaid robe that seemed to have significance for him.

I must have taken care of him for several days, because I remember being with him on both the day and evening shifts.  Typically, as students, we would work 2 weeks of days, followed by 2 weeks of evenings and then 2 weeks of nights, on each unit to which we were assigned.

I know I took care of him on the day shift, because I have a distinct memory of discussing him with the Team Leader.  She was a middle-aged lady with a European accent, flaming red hair, and too much blue eye shadow.  She had no sympathy for him.  She was convinced he was just fond of narcotics and didn’t need pain medication.  She paid no attention to my protests that I was sure he was genuinely in pain.

I spent enough time with him to assess his pain…both intensity and type.  He described his upper abdominal pain as “pulsating.”  I dutifully reported and charted this believing it was significant.

I don’t remember what tests were done or why it was that days later, it was suddenly decided on the evening shift that he had to go to surgery right then.  I guess someone finally figured out that the pulsating pain was a large aortic aneurysm threatening to rupture.  I helped to put him on the gurney to go to the Operating Room.

He was clearly frightened.  As others bustled around him, I touched his shoulder, bent down, and said quietly, “We will be waiting for you when you come back.”  There was no family present, and I wanted him to know someone would be there to greet him on his return.

With a trembling voice, he said, “I’m not coming back.”

He was right.  When they attempted to repair the bulge in his aorta, the tissue disintegrated, and he bled to death right there on the OR table.

Would it have made a difference if someone had believed his pain and my description sooner?  I don’t know.  I do know diagnosis would be much easier and faster now with MRIs.  Vascular surgery techniques have improved too.

 I also know that he is one of those patients embedded in my memory.

My Dad Could Sew

Was it a good thing or a bad thing that my father could sew?

When he was a little boy, my father had rheumatic fever.  His mother was hard-pressed to keep him quiet and avoid physical activity. 

Grandma had been a tailor…not just an accomplished seamstress…but a tailor.  Prior to her marriage, she worked at a clothing company that made men’s suits.  When sewing for the family, she even made her own patterns.  She would take measurements and trace out a pattern on newspaper.  Due to her skills, I never had a store-bought winter coat until I was in 7^th grade.  Also due to her skills, in desperation to keep my dad inactive, she taught him to sew. 

As a sickly child unable to rough house with the boys, he made clothes for his sisters’ dolls.  As an adult, he could sew on his own buttons and do minor repairs.  After my mother passed away, the problem with this emerged.

Dad never had very good fashion sense.  Years of my mother “dressing” him didn’t give him the picture.  After she passed, he decided that she had encouraged him to wear his slacks longer than he thought they should be.  He was living with us after she departed, so one day when I arrived home from work, he announced that he had shortened all of his slacks.  I was horrified when I saw the results.  He had carefully hemmed his slacks into “high water” position.

So attired, he forged out into the world, happy with his accomplishment and thinking he looked great.

I decided this was not a battle I wished to fight.  I had enough trouble getting him to go to the barber instead of doing a hatchet job on his own hair.

I hope my mother doesn’t scold me when I see her in heaven.  I think she will shrug it off and be as glad to see me, as I am to see her.

Thoughts on a New Day

What new book should I read,

What different place explore,

What question should I ask,

I should open…which door?

 

Is there something I’ve never tried,

A path I haven’t walked,

A truly interesting person

To whom I haven’t talked?

 

Is there a song I haven’t sung,

A joke I haven’t heard,

A flower I haven’t smelled,

A previously unknown bird?

 

Is there a prayer I haven’t prayed,

A task I’ve left undone,

Have I neglected God’s desire

That I glorify His Son.

 

Well then, I have good reason,

Another day to wake,

To continue to seek out,

The path I’m meant to take.

Spitting on a Rose

Today one of my daughters and I were talking on the phone about the influence grandparents have on grandchildren.  She commented that it was too bad all my grandparents had died by the time I was 13.  She wondered what would be different about me if I had had that on-going interaction into adulthood.  She wondered if Grandma Kratzat would have taught me to tat.

I told her one thing I was certain was that Grandpa Baumeister would have taught me how to grow roses.   He had a small backyard in the city of Buffalo, but he had many roses, and I was fascinated.  I particularly was curious about how he propagated new rose bushes by placing a rose with part of its stem attached in the ground under a mason jar.  To me, it seemed like a miracle that a new rose bush could be grown in this way.

When Grandpa B was in the hospital and seemed to be dying, I was taken to see him.  As I bent down to hug him, he held me close and with tears said, “I am so sorry.  I promised to show you how I grow my roses this summer, but I won’t be here to do that.”  I was not quite 12 years old and had no idea what to say.  I just continued to hug him.

Before talking with my daughter today, it had not occurred to me that the information on how to do this might now be available on the internet, so I went searching.  Sure enough, the technique is described.  It does say one should use a “rooting hormone” to stimulate the develop of the roots.  I am fairly certain this would not have been available commercially 65 years ago.  I wondered what naturally occurring rooting hormones might be available.  I found a list:  cinnamon, aloe, apple cider vinegar, honey, aspirin and saliva.  As I thought about each and what the likelihood of Grandpa using it might be, I thought, “Ha!  Saliva!”  I can picture him spitting on the cut bottom of the stem.  What’s more, I can picture that had he been able to show me his technique, he would have said, “OK, Ruthie, spit on this!”  And since, a young lady spitting was frowned on, it would have been a delicious secret between Grandpa and me as the rose bush grew, that it had required my saliva.

When I get to heaven and ask him about this, I might be disappointed if I find out he used cinnamon or vinegar from Grandma’s cupboard or aspirin from the medicine cabinet.  I prefer to think that something of himself went into those rose bushes.

Discerning Truth

I Corinthians 13 is a very familiar passage from the Bible…often known as the Love Chapter.  Recently a phrase from that section of scripture hit me in a new way as I read it from the Phillips translation.

…if there is knowledge, it will be swallowed up in truth.

This can’t happen soon enough to suit me.  There is so much supposed knowledge floating around these days, and I am certain that some of it is not “truth.”  It can’t possibly all be truth, because some of what is purported to be knowledge is in direction contradiction to other pieces of knowledge.  Truth could be staring someone in the face and not be at all obvious.

This problem is largely due to the prevalence of social media which has given absolutely everyone a platform for their ideas…a way to disseminate them unchallenged.  Any contradictions can be dismissed as coming from someone less knowledgeable or with a significant bias, and who’s to judge that?  The purveyors of the “knowledge” are not personally known to the consumers of it.

In simpler times, there were, of course, crackpots on both sides of issues, but these individuals did not have a very large sphere of influence.  Most were spreading their opinions among family and friends or in a local enough way that everyone knew someone who knew them.  The fact that they were unstable or given to really crazy ideas could easily be determined.  Those close to them knew their level of expertise.  They could not claim to have a body of knowledge on a subject when their level of education and experience were well known or easily verified.

Not so today!  Any nut case can get on the internet and spew their message.  He/she can claim to be educated or to have had firsthand experience, and we have no idea whether this is totally false or a smidge exaggerated.

This is dangerous!  Not everyone is discerning.  Many perfectly intelligent people are being taken in because they think they are listening to experts who “know” the facts.  Some of these facts influence life and death decisions.

Our world is so broken.  Only the one who defines truth can straighten out this mess and swallow up our pitiful knowledge with absolute TRUTH.

Even so, come Lord Jesus.

Wishing I Was Wrong

There have been a number of times in my life when I wished I was wrong….oh, how I wished I was wrong!

One day while I was in nursing school, I was assigned to care for a very large lady who had had gall bladder surgery.  In those day, there was no laparoscopic surgery, so there was a fairly large incision high in the abdomen on the right side.  This often caused people not to want to breathe deeply and to avoid moving around.  It was the nurses’ job to make them do deep breathing, even if it was uncomfortable, and to get them out of bed and walking to avoid both pneumonia and pulmonary embolisms resulting from blood pooling and clotting in the legs.

My obese patient refused to get out of bed and was even resistive to moving around.  Every time I came into the room, she had talked someone into cranking up the knee gatch.  I tried to explain that this was a dangerous position for her, as it would cause blood to pool in the vessels in her upper legs.

Her response was, “You young things think you know everything!  I know my own body, and I will know when I am ready to move around.”

Complicating the situation was the fact that she was very good friends with her doctor’s wife, who showed up with a girdle, so that she could hold things in when she felt ready to get up.  I wasn’t convinced that was a good idea because I was concerned about vessels in the groin area being compressed, but how does one tactfully object to what the doctor’s wife is doing with the patient.

I was not working the next day and was relaxing in the dorm when I got a phone call.  We all knew we were required to watch a certain number of autopsies.  A friend who was working called to clue me in to the opportunity to watch one that morning.  I inquired who the patient was.  My heart sank when I learned it was my patient the prior day.

I observed the autopsy that morning and two things about it are vivid to me.  One was that she had eaten scrambled eggs for breakfast, and they were in her stomach undigested.  The other….she died of a pulmonary embolism.  Blood had pooled in the leg vessels and formed a clot.  The clot let loose and traveled to her lungs, and that was it.

Sometimes a young thing knows what she is talking about.

I am old and sometimes I still know what I am talking about.

I will never watch another autopsy.  I hope I don’t have to pay my respects at any coffins.

I want to be wrong.  Oh…how I want to be wrong!