FATE

I went to my quarterly high school class luncheon at Quatman Cafe in Norwood, yesterday.  It is always a good time and usually brings back lost memories.  This day, it was a little different.

At our 50th reunion last month, I ran into an old classmate with whom I was very close in elementary school.  We were part of the same "gang".  It was his basement we used for our boy-girl encounters in the 7th and 8th grades.  Don't worry, nothing real bad went on.  We were much more naive than kids are today.

In any case, he told me at the reunion that he didn't know the class was having luncheons and that he would love to go.  I told him I would get him on the e-mail list and he told me that he didn't have e-mail.  Yikes, that seemed so foreign to me.  Well, I called him Tuesday to inform him about the luncheon and told him I would pick him up and take him.

He lives in a very nice condo in Symmes Township and his wife is a gem.  They are both retired and have no children or grandchildren.  Their only son had cancer and died.  He told me he was thankful he lost his job right before his son went through chemotherapy and radiation treatments so he could be with him.

On the way to lunch, we joked about how little I sleep - at least at night.  With a snicker, I explained how I manage to take a nap or two during the day.  He told me he couldn't do that because it would take too long to hook up his machine.  While he sleeps, he needs to be attached to a breathing machine through a port in his windpipe.  He has done that every night for the last thirty years.  You see, as we graduated from high school, he was befallen with a debilitating muscular disease that robbed his body of some of it's strength and caused his torso muscles to waste away.  It wont allow him to breath on his own while asleep.  All this is still better than the original prognosis.  The doctors told his mother, fifty years ago, that he had only six months to five years to live.

He is thankful . . . as am I.

'o.o'