The Contest

As I work on a batch of Chunky Tomato Catsup, I think of my sister, Shirley. “I’ll bet she wishes she could be in her kitchen cooking up a storm,” I blather.  If I get overly tired and wish I could sit down, the thought comes to me: “Wouldn’t Shirley love to be picking beans and tomatoes and bottling and freezing them?”  She has always loved to garden.  She has a huge vegetable garden and flowers that rival Temple Square.

 Not living in a fertile area, she works extra hard for every speck of beauty and all produce grown in the garden. Persistently, she plants tomatoes. Every year, the blight gets them. “Maybe this year will be different,” but it never is. Her beautiful ears of corn have been her trademark. None better anywhere. Her son thinks her lung disease might be the cause of the poisons she dusted on the corn husks to eradicate the worms.  Gardening was her crowning glory, as well as writing and giving funeral, patriotic, and church talks.  She was Grand Marshall of the 24^th of July Parade one year.

In July, while out watering her flowers, she leaned down to pull a weed and fell. Her oxygen pack was on her back and when she tried to get up, she fell backwards. There she lay until someone passing by in a car saw her. It took an hour for the ambulance to arrive from Cedar City. A broken femur bone. Emergency surgery to put a titanium rod from her hip to her knee early Sunday morning.

She’s 86-years-old. She’s vacillates between the hospital and the rehabilitation center. Congestive heart failure. Lungs filling up with liquid.  Two months now. Right during canning season. I know she wishes she were in her kitchen canning Chunky Tomato Catsup.

Meanwhile, my younger sister got hit by a UTA bus. Totaled her car. She was fortunate but she still has headaches.

Then we received word that my sister-in-law fell on Monday and broke her pelvis in five places. She is in a lot of pain. At least 3-5 weeks in the hospital.

Those are hard acts to follow.

How can I top them?

Is this some kind of contest for the elderly?

I think I’ll recluse myself. Withdraw from the competition.

I’ve got salsa to make, beans and kale to freeze.

A bike to ride.

Swimming.

And counting my many blessings.

Naming them one by one.