Has Spring Sprung?

 

I’m writing this blog and it’s so beautiful outside. I just want to spend the day by a river reading a book or fishing by a lake. Has spring really sprung? In Texas we may get two weeks of this weather in spring before the heat sets in like a wall of flames choking you with every breath. I got to thinking some of my patients haven’t been outside in years, how sad! I must make an effort the next time I work to let some out in our courtyard. We have a family of cats out in our courtyard that have decided it’s their new home.

I have a patient that isn’t able to get up much but her bed is next to a window looking out into the courtyard. Sometimes I go into her room and those cats are on her window seal. And she is trying her best to talk to them. Because she has had a stroke it sometimes hard for her to get her words out. But when those cats are near she could speak clearly.

I used to have a patient that had a small dog that lived with her and her husband in a room at the end of the hall I would work. He was a fat short legged so ugly that he was kinda cute kinda dog. He was the loudest dog I have ever heard. Any time someone would open their door all you would hear was that damn dog screaming. No matter what time of day it was. The owner was a short and a little on the heavy side but she could get around pretty well, Mrs. Hensley.

Her husband was a tall skinny thing that couldn’t sit still for more than five minutes. He loved art and was painting something all the time. He would paint cardboard, rocks, really anything he could get his hands on. They didn’t have a car but he would leave and take his bike. It was a three wheeled bike with a large basket in the back, all over town. I would see him rolling around town on that bike and think to myself, “ why is he all the way over here?”

When Covid hit our building, it hit hard. The smokers that we had in our building were ravished. Probably because their lungs were so bad from years of smoking. Mrs. Hensley was a smoker and she went really fast. Maybe in matter of weeks. I thought he wouldn’t make it without her, and the very next day after she passed away, he gave that dog to a family friend, packed up their room, and he left. I wasn’t sure if I would ever see him again. Then around six months later I get home and there is a box of food on my front porch with a painted rock, and the note said:

Thanks for taking care of me and my wife all that time. I sure did appreciate it. Love Mr. Hensley.

I’m not sure how he found out where I lived or how he even carried the groceries from a grocery store, but he figured it out. I would see him from time to time on his bike just rolling down the street with a huge smile on his face. He didn’t have a care in the world. You know I still have that painted rock.