I am always appreciative of those in our community who approach me with concerns about my father’s condition.

There have been a number of family members who have been put to shame by the sincere care of those with whom I have spoken. As prayers were answered, last Monday he finally got to return home after a 28-day stay in the hospital — or should I say hospitals.

It is hard to accept that our loved ones are growing older and more infirm, that things are changing and to know, one day, they are no longer going to be with us. Nothing brings those facts home like seeing your father in the hospital for a month.

Many of those who will read these words have already suffered the loss of one or both parents. I can see how hard that could be. I have lost all of my grandparents and great grandparents, but my parents are still with me. I suppose I should also mention that they are still in a loving marriage after more than a few decades of cohabitation. These days, holding a marriage together seems to be getting more and more difficult for our society. But that’s a story for another time.

The day prior to his arrival at home, I drove up to Salem, Va. to visit with him at the Veteran’s Hospital. I rolled him outside in a wheelchair and we sat in the shade and talked for a little while. He’s been on a strict diet and he wanted to make sure he got back inside in time for supper. If you miss out, I guess you just miss out. My mother rode with us in the van, one of two trips she made to the hospital with me. Other family members pitched in to help her get back and forth, including a few days when she stayed in a hotel near the hospital.

He had been in the intensive care unit for about two weeks prior to being transferred, including a brief stint on a breathing machine. I’m sure some of the less medically challenged in the community would correct me or change that to respirator, but I guess you’ll just have to suffer through with my medical descriptions. He also had an intravenous line in his neck and bad bruising on his hands from the earlier IV attempts.

Prior to going into the hospital, he weighed in at more than 200 pounds, about 210 if I was guessing. After about a month on hospital food (or no food, at times), he came home at a slim and trim 180. His heart had been pumping hard to try and carry away the fluid that filled his legs and even his lungs, but the pneumonia had caused quite a problem in that way.

Even now, he rattles as he breathes in such a way that I would be heading to the doctor if it were me. Of course, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) doesn’t exactly lend itself to good breathing.

After the extra weight came off, I noticed that his face looks wrinkled, his arms looks smaller and he generally looks older than he did a few months ago. I suppose such a battle with death will take a lot out of a man. I’m hoping time and good health will allow him to build back up. I also want to make sure that he gets his pneumonia shot from now on.

We had the opportunity to talk for a few minutes on this Sunday. He was back at home, albeit with a new hospital bed to help him sleep sitting up, a walker just in case he needs it and other accessories of the health profession.

He was carrying the walker in front of him as he headed for the bathroom once that day; later he forgot to take it with him altogether. That was good to see.

Some of the family wasn’t around to hear the I-told-you-so lines, but I was available if anyone had been willing to listen.

Now I have decided to try and make a movie tape of him telling some of his life story, just in case some of the future generations don’t have the opportunity to know and admire him as I have. I wonder how well he might cooperate, but I will hide the camera in a plant if I have to.

The knowledge that our older folks are taking to the grave with them is priceless. Not that I want to send him to the grave, it’s just that I want to make sure and record some of the information, the history, that he can share on the family, growing up in the mountains before cars and paved roads, fighting overseas in the U.S. Army, raising the family, farming and a million other things.

Any of you out there who have older relatives with genealogical information or just wonderful, full lives to share, should take the opportunity to record at least a portion of that knowledge on paper, film or tape lest it become lost to the ages. Take the time to learn from your elders.

Things can be tooling along fine and then you suddenly find yourself surrounded by nay-saying relatives in a hospital waiting room. Trust me, it can happen before you know it.

Anyway, I hope to use the coming weeks and months in a productive manner so I can have some free time on weekends to spend with my father. One thing that has always struck me about him is his daily prayer time, which he spends in private in a quiet room. Perhaps we all need a little more time like that in our schedule, too.

I noticed in looking at my schedule that it was filled with things to do, but nowhere in it was time penciled in for the folks that matter most. If you think about it, most of us spend more time with strangers than we do with the ones we love.

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