My USC Trojan Band-mate, Dave, shared on Facebook that his dad is in the hospital after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke. I just read in his update that Dave's dad was communicating with his mom by holding her hand and using Morse code. I found that profoundly sweet and sad at the same time.
It brought back a memory of when my own dear mom was in the hospital. Her body was ravaged by the return of late-stage ovarian cancer. She was on a ventilator, so she couldn't speak, but she clearly had things she wanted to say. We brought her a piece of paper that had the alphabet on it so she could use a pencil to point to letters one by one and spell out words. Her mind was a bit clouded by pain meds, and she was having trouble locating the right letters on the page. I can't remember who thought of it first - whether it was me or Brian or Debbie - but we reprinted the paper so that the letters were arranged as they appear on a keyboard, rather than alphabetically. That made it easier for her, and she was able to give some last instructions and encouragement to each of us using this very slow method.
I remember that as she spelled out words, I would see the first few letters and begin calling out words to guess them before she finished, trying to help her save some of what was obviously great effort. Each letter selection was painstakingly slow and deliberate, and it made her very tired. Like a control-freak teammate in a life-and-death-stakes Pictionary game, I was doing anything I could to speed up the process. Often, she would continue doggedly pointing to the letters to finish out an already correctly guessed word, and I remember being really frustrated by that. Apparently, my need to be the smartest kid in class extended even to this. I still kind of feel guilty and bad about that.
Memories are weird. Stuff like Dave's post can bring back the most vivid recollections, even so many years later. It's been almost 17 years since she died. I miss her so much and still think of things I wished I'd asked her. There are so many things I wish she could see. But that's for another time...
