The Trouble with Harry.
My mother’s stepfather – Harry – is a very nice man. He married my mother’s mother and had one child with her. My mother’s sister. My Aunt.
A few years back, Grandpop Harry as we all know him, had a stroke. Then he moved into a nursing home. Of course the man is loved and gets a lot of visitors. All was well with Harry. Until the recent flu season.
Well, Harry got sick. And then he stopped eating and drinking. The nursing home sent him to the hospital and he had a stomach virus. He got some IV fluid and was just fine in a couple of days.
So what is the trouble with Harry? My Aunt. I shall call her “Aunt Nutty”.
Naturally, the nursing home called her when Harry went to the hospital. They told her that he wasn’t eating or drinking. They also told her that it was a stomach virus and he would be fine. It was that last part that she had trouble hearing.
Later, she told her husband to watch their 3 children while she went to see Harry in the hospital. Upon her arrival, Harry was resting comfortably in bed and was hooked up to monitors and a refreshing IV full of some sort of wonderful liquid.
She took one look at him….and lost every ounce of sense that she wished she possessed.
She left sullen. On the way home to her husband, she decided that the trouble with Harry was, “It was his time.”
His “time” meant that he was as good as dead to her. So that is the premise that she went on for the next 3 days.
The first thing she did was the first thing you do. You call every living relative and tell them it’s Harry’s “time”. This is very fortunate. This alerted the sane people that something was wrong. That there was trouble with Harry.
So, of course the sane people, as they were notified by my crazy Aunt Nutty, started to call the other sane people. Before long they had a “Sane Train” going and they were building up speed. They just weren’t fast enough to cut Aunt Nutty off at the pass.
I have decided that insanity is faster than the speed of light. Which is just about how fast Aunt Nutty went back to the hospital. This time, the trouble with Harry was that he was still resting comfortably. Aunt Nutty asked his nurse how he was doing. “He is doing as well as can be expected. We have to wait and see if the medicine is working. If it is, we just need to get him drinking before he can go home.”
Aunt Nutty mistook “home” for crossing over to a better place. The sane people knew it meant going back to the nursing home. She briefly stopped at his bedside and wept like a soap opera star being written out of a storyline. Afterwards, Aunt Nutty thought it over and being a practical nut job, she decided that she should make arrangements for Harry.
Final Arrangements.
That is correct, Sir. She bought him a casket. A nice one with an off white satin-like material inside. Came with one pillow which was also satin-like. Satin or no satin, Aunt Nutty felt much better now. Whew. At least he had a place to lay his head.
So the next day goes by and no forward progress on Harry’s part and no movement of Aunt Nutty’s part. The Sane Train adds coal to the engine and starts chugging. My mother was the conductor. She is very plain speaking and will speak until your ears beg for mercy. The plans were in place and the next day, it began.
Only trouble was, Aunt Nutty beat them out of the gate. She was at the hospital when my mother arrived at her house. Nutty’s husband, Jack informed my mother that she was at the hospital. Oh nice. Now my mother is headed to the hospital. Oh well, best place for a showdown of sorts.
Well, when my mother walked into his room, she found her sister lying across Harry, sobbing, and telling him that he could go to the light. It was alright. She would find the strength to be fine.
“You aren’t going to be fine when I get my hands on you!” my mother shouted to her.
God I love my family.
I just hope I never get the stomach virus. I don’t like satin-like pillows.
