Tobacco, Tulips, and Terminal Care

Seventy-two hours was a long time. But soon the conflicts would be resolved. While John's body struggled for breath and his soul struggled for eternity, she considered the internal conflict she faced. What role should she play? Doctor? Daughter? Could she somehow be both? As she contemplated his death, memories of his life and their shared bonds trickled in. She reached across and held his hand and automatically checked a radial pulse for rate and rhythm.

John smokeda lot. Mostly back when cigarettes and martinis were still fashionable and Ronald Reagan's face adorned Chesterfield posters. Early years on the farm that his immigrant father had dug out of the Pennsylvania countryside were filled with responsibility and love. Childhood dreams were born in a one-room, clapboard schoolhouse with eight grades huddled around a coal stove. The teacher, fresh from the Pennsylvania Normal School, gave John his first taste of books and cigarettes. Neither one seemed dangerous at the time.

Then came that special girl. But her matriarchal Southern mother did not approve of the damn Yankee. Although she banished him from her house and her daughter, she could not stop the letters and the secret meetings. Soon the two young lovers stole away to the church up the street, picking up the required witnesses along the way. There they etched their love into the county registrar's book and eventually into the old lady's family Bible.

With Pearl Harbor, life settled into a happy routine of marriage, postponed dreams, and ration books that doled out cigarettes and sugar. Postwar days saw a good job as a machinist, promotion to shop foreman, a new baby girl, and a sense that some dreams could come true. Then came the angel of sudden death for his beloved wife. Her progressive mitral stenosis from old rheumatic …