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As a child going to Saint Joseph’s Catholic Elementary School in Wilmington, DE, I learned that purgatory was a purification place for my non-mortal sins en route to heaven, but I did not have a clue that it may not be a mythological place after death but a real place here on earth.
I was sitting on a bench in Battery Park, New Castle, DE looking out at the Delaware River when I saw a lady coming up the walk path using a walker about thirty meters from me. She stopped in the middle of the pathway and she leaned forward over the walker to gather herself. This woman stayed in the bent over position for what seemed like ten minutes for I started to worry about her health.
Suddenly, she raised her head up then she started to walk. When she reached where I was sitting we started to chat. I guess she could read the concern in my eyes, so she dumped her emotional bucket.
She said she was 44 years old. She had been dealing with medical crises since age 36. This lady revealed that she first was diagnosed with liver cancer eight years ago. The cancer treatments were replete with chemotherapy where she lost all of her hair and the cancer medicine she takes today makes her throw up regularly.
A year and a half after she got married, her husband found a lump in the middle of his forehead. She said the husband tried to hide this lump from her by wearing a hat in the house. This woman could not contain her disdain when she said her husband knew of all of her medical crises so he should not be hiding his medical condition from her. She went on to say he went to the doctor and they determined his lump was noncancerous.
This lady finally revealed that she had been in a car accident that wreaked havoc on her nervous system. She was having high pain 24 hours per day and 7 days a week. The doctors had not been able to stop the pain. Finally, this lady revealed she was having an operation on her spine the next day in hopes that it would relief the pain in her legs and feet. She seemed to feel better after sharing her tribulation then she started to walk forward down the walk path.
The sick lady had an accompanist with her. As the sick lady walked forward the accompanist dumped her bucket. She revealed that her boyfriend had just lost his 53 years old father to cancer. The accompanist revealed that she also had another friend to die in this same week.
The accompanist tried to light up a cigarette to calm her nerves. The wind blew the cigarette out of her mouth and she was scrambling to find it in the bushes behind my park bench. This accompanist finally admitted that she was not a smoker. There was no doubt in my mind that she was worried sick over the future of the sick lady with whom she walked.
I found myself haunted by the comment that the sick lady made as we ended our conversation. She said, she wondered what had she done so bad to deserve the medical problems plaguing her today. Her words are still haunting. I hope that her operation went well. The sick lady did help me to understand that I had been blessed with life for Gwynelle and I have been married longer than she has been alive.
