Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Memory (07/10/08)
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TITLE: Recesses of the Mind | Previous Challenge Entry
By Anna L. Russell
07/14/08 -
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My assignment was to visit her twice a month to provide auditory stimulation. Sometimes she volunteered words but mostly she was quiet.
Today, however, she started talking immediately about her children. "My class room was full of children, everyday." She sat in the rocker. "I didn't need any children of my own." Her jaw set and harshness changed her tone. "Ralph wanted children but I didn't."
I interjected, "You could have adopted a child."
Her answer spewed to my ear. "What? And have a bad apple? A renegade of a whelp?"
Sadly her aggitation increased and our session ended.
As was my custom I walked down the hall to Ralph's room on another wing of the nursing home. Originally Lizzie and Ralph shared a roomuntil they had to be separated becasue of Lizzie's abuse.
Ralph, was hunched in his wheelchair, bones protruding through paper-thin skin. I knelt and wrapped my arm around him. Without provocation, he muttered, "I wanted children, but Lizzie didn't. I would have given up traveling to stay home with a son and daughter." He nearly sobbed. "But Lizzie didn't want any children."
Two people in their 80s with "winter's" chill on them speak of a heart issue, the one that had divided them in early marriage during mid-life, had deprived them of joys and sorrows, and denied them solace in their declining years.
Their agony gave me a new perspective on Psalm 127:3-5 "Children are a gift from the Lord; babies are a reward. Children who are born to a young man are like arrows in the hand of a warrior. Happy is the man who has his bag full of arrows."
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