Bodark Creek - 61. Chapter 61

When you’re thinking so much about one thing, other things slip by. While everyone was worried about Paul, his sister Lilah had a second baby. It was a boy, named Samuel. And Del’s daughter Lisa fell in love and got married. Allan was a boy she’d known from college in Houston, but they’d stopped seeing each other after that because he never thought he could live in a small town.

“But he changed his mind,” Lisa said. “I was hoping he would because he’s the only man I could ever love.”

“I don’t want to tell her otherwise,” Joann commented later. “I just hope they’ll be happy.”

They were, and soon Lisa’s brother Daniel announced he was getting married.

“Don’t you want to get engaged first?” his uncle Neal joked. “The men in our family believe in long engagements.”

“What’s the point?” Daniel asked. “I love Shelley, and she loves me.”

“Besides, they’ve been sleeping together for six months,” Del put in.

“Yeah, well, that’s another family tradition,” Neal said, laughing.

Shelley was a girl from town, but she was a few years younger than Daniel. So they didn’t really know each other growing up.

“She always lived in town, and we were always out on the farm,” Daniel said. “We went to the same schools but didn’t have any of the same friends.”

They met after Shelley came home from college and needed new car insurance. “That’s not the first time insurance brought two people in our family together,” Susan remembered. Though, of course, it was someone coming in for insurance that pushed Neal and Valerie apart.

“We’ll just have to wish them luck, too,” Joann said.

“It sounds like you’re putting a curse on them,” I kidded.

“Are you calling me a witch?” she asked.

We laughed about that for a couple of weeks, which also helped take our minds off Paul. Something else that helped was Daniel wanted to do something special for his wedding. He wanted his cousin Danny to be there.

“I know we haven’t seen each other in years,” he admitted. “But I sometimes think about him. And I think it’s something Uncle Neal might like.”

Daniel called Danny, and they talked for a while. Then they talked back and forth over a couple of months. It wasn’t getting the time off from work that Danny had a problem with. Daniel had given him plenty of notice. “It’s just coming back into the family so suddenly,” he wrote to me. “I didn’t mean to be apart from it. I just grew up that way. And you’ve always stayed in touch, and I really liked that. But if I come back to visit people, I don’t want it to be at a time when it takes away from someone else. And people should be looking at Daniel and Shelley at their wedding. Not at me.”

“It makes sense,” I told Daniel, after I let him read Danny’s letter.

“It does,” he admitted. “And I appreciate him thinking that way.”

Neal insisted otherwise. “It’s just another excuse,” he grumbled. “If there’s one thing that boy’s full of, it’s excuses. And now he’s gone and ruined your wedding.”

“He hasn’t done anything like that,” Daniel said. “It was just an idea. But someone can always have a better one.”

And there was always the chance that Danny would slip into the wedding at the last moment as a surprise. He didn’t, but he sent a nice present.

The other thing that happened was Leona died. She started not feeling well not too long after Paul’s accident. But it wasn’t from not taking care of herself.

“I’m just getting old,” she said. “All the parts that are supposed to wear out are doing just that.”

“I’m sure you have a few good years left,” I told her.

“But only a few.”

She did, but that didn’t put off the day when she finally couldn’t live by herself. She had two young nurses sharing her house. “There’s no point in letting Ruth’s room sit empty.” But they weren’t there all the time.

The girls were more like Leona’s friends than her tenants. She never charged them much, and they were always doing her favors. But when they were home, they noticed the things she wasn’t doing.

“We remind her all the time which food in the refrigerator is hers. It’s not hard to tell because we don’t eat at the house very often. But then she lets the vegetables go bad and the milk get sour.”

Within a year, Leona had to move to Dallas, to live with her oldest daughter. I really missed seeing her every day, and though we talked for a while on the phone each morning, it wasn’t the same.

“I lived in that town for so long,” she told me in one conversation. “And now I’m forgetting it all. And that’s not the worst of it. I get up in the middle of the night, to go to the bathroom, and I think I’m home again. Not even at the house in town, but back on the farm. And I can’t find anything because nothing’s where it should be.”

Leona died in a hospital, a place she never wanted to be. But she got too sick, and her doctor said she had to go in. Then she suddenly got worse.

“If I could have even brought her home for the last few days,” her daughter Janice told me, “I would have. But it all came too fast.”

“I know you meant well,” I assured her. “And I’m certain your mother knew.”

Though I understood what Janice meant about things happening quickly. One afternoon, I was sitting in the kitchen, thinking that something I ate for lunch wasn’t agreeing with me. Then Joann took one look at me and said, “Mama, we’re going to the hospital.”

“Why?” I asked. “It’s only a little stomach trouble. It will go away.”

“We’re going,” she said. And before I knew it, I was in the emergency room.

“Your mother’s having indigestion,” the young doctor told Joann.

“She’s having a heart attack is what it is,” Joann replied. “And if you don’t go and find a better doctor, you won’t be working here very long.”

“Joann...” I started to say.

“Ma’am...” the doctor began.

Even the nurses who knew us weren’t sure what to say. But Joann did. She never hollered, but she made her points clear. “This woman is eighty-four years old. Our family has a history of heart attacks. Every one of her brothers and sisters died from one.”

“That’s not really true,” I tried to say.

“Mama, you’re not helping.”

By that time Del and Neal were there. And Joann had called our family doctor. He took one look at me and said, “This woman is having a heart attack. Can’t anyone see that?” And he quickly got me the treatment I needed.

Of course, Joann really saved my life. And she did it so fast, I didn’t even realize I was in danger. All along, I kept thinking, “If I just hadn’t eaten that egg salad...”

It was only a small attack. “You’ve kept yourself in very good shape,” our doctor said. “You never drank, and if you ever smoked, you gave it up long ago.”

“I never started,” I told him.

“And all those years of working on the farm have kept you pretty healthy. If it wasn’t for what your family passed down, you’d probably outlive us all.”

“I don’t want to do that,” I said, laughing. He was a young man, with as-young wife and two school-aged children.

“Then let’s not talk about it,” he decided.

Everyone else was happy, too. “It’s too soon to start thinking about losing you,” Neal told me, and Del and Joann agreed.

“But how did you know I was having a heart attack?” I asked Joann later. “Even I couldn’t tell.”

“Just because I’ve worked for a dentist all my life,” she said, “doesn’t mean I didn’t study nursing. And we have enough family history that I’m always looking for bad signs.”

“I hope you’re not watching me that closely,” I teased. “I don’t want you worried.”

“Well, that’s what I do,” she said. “Being a daughter. Plus being a witch.”