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Some people find marriage brings misfortunes from health crises that test their belief in the idea of God. They wonder why the Grim-reaper takes so many of their love ones leaving them to face loneliness as their purgatory.
Years ago, at the limit of my neighborhood walks’ loop, I would stop to chat with a World War II veteran who had a family member or potential lover, what seamed always, in losing struggles with the Grim-reaper. He had lost his wife many years earlier, but each time he would share the potential of a new lady friend I would later learn that she was in a life and death struggle with health issues. I could not imagine the emotional toll these horrifying deathly revelations were having on this veteran who lived alone in his townhouse.
This WW II veteran had two sons. The youngest son was the father of 5 or 6 kids. This son completed a Master of Arts degree in music. He landed a music director’s job at a Midwestern church where he moved his wife and children. The celebration of this son’s upward mobility potential was dashed when the veteran learned that one day his youngest child just dropped dead.
His second son had just recently remarried and moved to Florida. I knew the second son and his wife for they were great church people. They were excellent role models. Nevertheless, this son was in a swimming pool when the Grim-reaper also took his life.
I felt great sorrow over the tough fate of this WW II veteran to lose all of his immediate family. Yet when I thought about it I realized that being a senior citizen is wrought with similar stories or worse. One mother lost four children to cancer in four years. Widows find themselves burying multiple husbands from deadly diseases who are now living with loneliness as a constant companion.
I am reminded of my late maternal grandmother’s belief, who lived to be 102 years old, on getting put in old folk’s homes. She called them, “living tombs.” Grandmother wanted no part of old folk’s homes, but the last I heard of this WW II veteran that that had become his fate. It must be really tough on this old veteran to have no children with whom to discuss the good times and offer hope of a tomorrow when the potential for instant death surrounds him daily.
