On Sunday, December 3, I went to church while David stayed with O. J. After church we decided to go to Martha’s for lunch so we could mail the Christmas letters finished the night before. O. J. wanted fried chicken from Walmart so I parked between Walmart and Sam’s in the handicapped space, set the emergency brake, turned on the stereo on and left O. J. sitting in the car while I went in for chicken.
There was a line and I had to wait while more chicken was cooked. I picked up a pie and some salad and phoned Martha that we were bringing chicken for lunch with her family. The wait for chicken was longer than usual. After about 20 minutes I went through the check out line and through the front door. A crowd had circled in the area near my car. I hurried over. A man was lying across the striped lines marking handicapped parking. It was O. J.
I knelt beside him and asked what happened. “I was coming to find you,” he said. . A man said that an ambulance had been called. Because O. J. could not see he had not known where he was going. Wheelchair bound for months, he had opened the door, pulled himself to a standing position by the door, turned and tried to walk toward Walmart. Witnesses had seen him turn loose of the car, take two steps and fall.
A man had come at once putting his folded coat under O. J.’s head. Others had gathered and were watching over him until I arrived. He had not been able to tell them who he was or who I was. There was relief that I came before the ambulance.
While he was loaded into the ambulance, I made some phone calls to family and beat the ambulance to the hospital emergency room. Wewaited as usual for the doctors diagnosis. The x-rays showed a broken hip and surgery was scheduled for the next day. I slept in the recliner beside his bed as I always did when he was in the hospital.
The break in the hip was clean and the surgery was successful with less difficulty than expected. We were on seventh floor until being transferred to rehabilitation services in the next building. He was a patient there until the last of December. On Christmas he was given a 4 hour pass to go home with his family. He was so frail that the family knew he did not have much longer with us.
When he was finally released, Seton Home Health care came to care for him. There were nurses, LPNs, therapists, and chaplains. It was still a 24 hour battle, but there was help a couple of hours a day.
On January 3, toothache pain sent me to the dentist and David stayed with O. J. When I returned David showed me the song he had written and sang for his father. It was beautiful. As I heard it I thought of other words so I added them to make a poem. That night I included poem and song in letters to a first cousin and another to a friend. Within days letter and poem was published in two different publications. Since then I have given away thousands of copies and used them as basis for devotional talks.
