Last week I had planned on writing this week about the old swimming hole called Carters Crater. Then my Mother-in-Law(Johanna) died on Thursday at the age of 93 of kidney failure.
Up to last Thursday, I had given my own morality no thought. When Wally died in 1982, I was 32 and my end of life seemed far away. When Auntie Kay died 10 years later, there was still no thought of end of my life. My ex wife died in October of last year of stomach cancer which is something her own Mother died of, and now Johanna.
It is not that I feel impending doom but rather that work, which has consumed most of my life, is not so important any more. It also helps that I’m 65 years of age and government income suppliments help ease the burden of the daily cost of living.
Wally was 82 when he died. When his family doctor told him he would have to use a cane after a surgery on his knee, he protested and refused to use one because canes were for “old people!” That stubbornness led to his demise.
Wally was a self made man and letting go was difficult for him as was demonstrated by both myself and one of my sisters when we offered to manage the orchard for him. He behaved as if we were planning an insurrection. Neither of us put up much of a fight, for after all he was our Dad and his wishes deserved respect.
The orchard is long gone and so is that life. All that remains is the writing of those memories, so that long after we are gone the future generations will have some inkling of who we were and what we did.