[AT] No Left Turn Part #2

[Ed Stewart]

*Very Good!!*

jfgrant wrote:
> No Left Turn Part #2
>
> No Left Turns  Part #2
> After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother 
> whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If 
> she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or 
> go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine 
> running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. (In the 
> evening, then, when
> I'd stop by, he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on 
> second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the
> multimillionaire on third base scored.") If she were going to the 
> grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to
> make sure she loaded up on ice cream.
> As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and 
> she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the 
> secret
> of a long life?" "I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be 
> something bizarre.
> "No left turns," he said. "What?" I asked.
> "No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I 
> read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen 
> when
> they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your 
> eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So 
> your
> mother and I decided never again to make a left turn." "What?" I said 
> again. "No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three  rights are 
> the same as a left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make  three 
> rights."
> "You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support. "No," 
> she said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works."
> But then she added: "Except when your father loses count." I was 
> driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started 
> laughing. "Loses count?" I asked. "Yes," my father admitted, "that 
> sometimes happens. But
> it's not a problem. You just make seven rights,
> and you're okay again."
> I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked. "No," he said. 
> "If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. 
> Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off
> another day or another week."
> My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her 
> car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999,
> when she was 90. She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died 
> the next year, at 102. They both died in the bungalow they had
> moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty 
> years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the 
> tiny
> bathroom -- the house had never had one. My father would have died 
> then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he 
> paid for  the house.) He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him 
> a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy 
> sidewalks but  wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind 
> and sound body until
> the moment he died.
> A happy life
> One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had 
> to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all
> three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual 
> wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the
> news. A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the 
> first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one 
> point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not 
> going to live much
> longer." "You're probably right," I said. "Why would you say that?" he 
> countered, somewhat irritated. "Because you're 102 years old,"
> I said. "Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next 
> day. That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up 
> with him
> through the night. He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, 
> apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said: "I would like to make an
> announcement. No one in this room is dead yet." An hour or so later, 
> he spoke his last words:
> "I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no 
> pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as
> anyone on this earth could ever have."
> A short time later, he died.
> I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've wondered now and 
> then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long.
> I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life.
> Or because he quit taking left turns.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> AT mailing list
> Remembering Our Friend Cecil Monson 11-4-2005
> http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
>

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Ed Stewart
Reynoldsville, PA.
15851