Hello, Real World. Hello, 1970s.

You may have been wondering, as did the folks back East in Dancing with Wolves,  “Now, why don’t [s]he write?” In my case, folks, depression. I slept through most of 2014 and when I was awake, I mainly gazed vaguely out the window or read a book until I fell back asleep. I did a little knitting on easy-peasy projects, but I haven’t picked up a piece of my main hobby, cross stitching, since Lucy#1 died, because I have been unable to make my mind focus well enough to follow a pattern. I bottomed out in December 2014, clawed my way out of the dark, and have only been back to pretty much full-time normal function for a month or three. I started a more detailed knitting project, but I still haven’t tried to cross stitch. That may be the acid test, and maybe I can give it a shot next weekend.

At any rate, even while I’ve been one big emotional malfunction, I haven’t wanted to give up this family story – I’ve just been unable to write it. So, here we go, back to the life and times of the Two Lucys and our family.

Lucy#1 left me seven boxes of photographs. Some are great big packing boxes, and I haven’t opened those yet, but I took three smaller boxes to Austin a couple weekends ago so Colene and I could divide them up.

What a hoot!! It happens that many of the photos in the three boxes were scenery from various trips Lucy#1 took over the years, and while we said, “oh, pretty” a lot, those weren’t keepers for us. The photos we examined closely and divided between us were the ones with the people we knew. Those people photos are our gold!

Here’s a keeper:

I’m fairly certain this charming family portrait was taken in the early ‘70s, in our kitchen in Austin. It looks to me that I’m trying not to cry in this photo, which suggests my Uncle Gilbert took it. I’m crying or about to cry in nearly every teenager picture he took of me! I hated having my picture taken, would always try to get out of it, and he would eventually (by shame or by physical force) make me be in the photo. However dorky I was, though, man-oh-man, check out my cute family! Isn’t Colene adorable? (But why is she wearing long sleeves while the rest of us are in summer attire? I wish we had narratives to go along with these gems.) Leroy looks the same as always, handsome with a crew cut. And look at Lucy#1!!!! What a doll! It’s fun to remember her being so young and happy!

I sat at that very table every afternoon to do my homework. (Yes, I was the super-geeky teen who got the homework out of the way before suppertime, so I could have my evenings free. If only I were so good about getting things done now! Ha!) I did my homework at the kitchen table so I could talk Lucy#1’s ears off while I worked on the school stuff and she cooked supper. She was my sounding board, my spell-checker, and my problem-solving assistant all rolled into one. She taught me what turned out to be one of the most valuable lessons for life, while helping me with my algebra and geometry proofs, simply by saying, “Read that problem to me again.” She later confessed she had no idea how to do the proofs, but she knew that if she could keep me focused on the problem by reading it to her over and over, I would figure it out on my own. She was correct, with both the high-school math problems and the approach to life’s problems. I’ve learned a lot of things and solved a lot of problems in my life by reading and/or tackling the thing again and again until – presto! -- success.

I learned a lot and laughed a lot that kitchen table. Lucy#1 listened while I fought my way through algebra and geometry and taught me to figure them out (and grow to love them), especially the proofs. She listened to my tales of teenage woes and joys and taught me how to walk on. She told me tales of the extended family and of the people she worked with, their woes and joys, how they were walking on, and her take on their situations. Lucy#1 knew what I needed to know and hear and learn, and she taught me as well as she was able, all at that kitchen table.

Ha! Five cents!!

Lucy#1 grew up in a very small town in the South, in the ‘30s and ‘40s. Her parents were farming stock from Georgia who moved to Florida to find work during the Great Depression. They were intelligent but not well educated (I don’t think either of my grandparents stayed in school past the sixth or eighth grade), poor but hard-working. As one might expect, Lucy#1 and her siblings were quite intelligent and their parents were determined they would finish high school, which, at the time, was all the education most folks had or needed.

Lucy#1 and all her siblings did well in school; all graduated and went on to successful lives. Lucy#1 joined the Air Force at age 19, which set her on the road for a unique life of experience and travel both in the United States and overseas.

The two things Lucy#1 believed held her back or made her stand out – and not in a good way – were the poor grammar she learned at home as a child and her Southern accent. She told the story of being a first-grader and having her teacher correct her grammar. Lucy#1, always fiercely competitive and determined to be the smartest and the best, was humiliated to be corrected. She wanted to quit school right then. Her daddy explained why she needed to stay in first grade, she took his lecture to heart, and willingly learned proper grammar.

When Lucy#1 was stationed in Massachusetts shortly after she joined the Air Force, she found that people could identify her Southern roots as soon as she spoke. That did not appeal to Lucy#1, so she remade her speech patterns and accent into the most neutral of neutrals.

The joke around the house was that my sister and I were, upon arrival in the world from the womb, immediately informed of two things: we would go to college, and we would speak properly with no trace of accent. Period. These items were non-negotiable as far as Lucy#1 was concerned.

I was a trial to poor Lucy#1 because I was a natural mimic and I altered my speech to match my favorite people. We visited family where I loved my whiney, drawling, good-grammar-eschewing cousin and I came home with a whiney Texas drawl and tried out, “ain’t”. We visited family where another cousin had a funny laugh and I adopted her laugh and her pronounced Florida twang. After any trip, It would take Lucy#1 a couple weeks to re-shape my neutral accent and divest my vocabulary of undesired words and phrases.

I’m not sure what drove her to it, but when I was in junior high school, Lucy#1 found the perfect way to make us toe the grammar line. She covered a baking-powder can with blue paper, wrote “Good Grammar Fund” on it in black marker, and began to charge us five cents for each infraction. My father had some ingrained grammar “issues” and he also (rather gamely, I think, given that he was probably 40 years old and was the source of most the money we all paid) paid up for poor grammar. However, fair was fair, and since Lucy#1 was the only one in the family who cussed, she had to pay for bad words, and her payment was higher – she had to pay a quarter for every curse word.

Imagine the look on any friend’s face when she ate supper at our house for the first time, and family members interrupted the conversation with, “Ha! Five cents, please!” That ejaculation was sometimes followed by a lively discussion of the finer points of spoken English before we returned to the original conversation. My friends thought the whole Lucy family was nuts, but the competitive ones got into the spirit of it and joined in. My sister and I saw nothing unusual in the situation, and not only honed our grammar skills, but collected a lot of money for the fund as a result of Lucy#1 becoming annoyed and saying “s—t!”

Collecting 25 cents from her for swear words was nice, but the most fun was when we could catch Lucy#1 in a grammatical error. Those catches were rare, but we did occasionally snare her on some lazy phrase. Woo hoo! Party time!

Almost everyone whom I’ve told about the Good Grammar Fund has thought it was hilarious. A few friends thought the Fund bordered on child abuse. I will defend the Good Grammar Fund forever as a great idea. My sister and I both sailed through school and still sail through life, easily writing everything from essays and research papers to business letters and thank-you notes. Neither of us is daunted by the English language, whether spoken or written. We come across well in person and on paper.

I’m not saying we speak and write perfectly (certainly everyone who has read anything I’ve written can attest to the fact that I have little understanding of the correct use of commas and way overuse slang and parentheses, among other failings) but our grammar is still good after all these years. Colene has even kept her neutral accent intact. I love a good Southern drawl and can put one on when I feel the need (as when I’m talking to a drawling policeman who probably is going to write me a ticket). My natural drawl shows up when I’m very tired (which was a source of amusement to my coworkers when I lived in northern Illinois), turning “tired” into “taaard”. I can’t remember the last time I pronounced the “g” at the end of a word – I’m always “runnin’ here” and “goin’ there” and “fixin’ to do somethin’ else”.

But the Good Grammar Fund bonded our family. It gave us an endless number of things to debate, countless hours of laughter, and sometimes made our suppertime conversation even more raucous than normal. In the end, while we were teasing each other and listening for mistakes, the Good Grammar Fund kept us from the lazy speech habits that could have kept us from good jobs and good first impressions.

I saw a saying on Pinterest: Never underestimate the seductive power of a good vocabulary.

I would add to that, “. . . or good grammar.”

Thanks, Lucy#1!!

Six years old and chewing tobacco!

I haven’t written anything in a very long time because I have been sad and missing Lucy#1. Now, though, I am at the point where it will make me happy to write about her.  Next up -- some stories from the vaults (vaults of my memory, that is). Some of these stories have been famous in our family for as long as I can remember. 

This story has always cracked me up. Picture a small-for-her-age, tow-headed little girl in this one.

We all know Lucy#1 smoked for many years. What is not common knowledge is that she had her first experience with tobacco the summer she was six years old.

Lucy#1 had a brother four years older than she, and as is typical, Lucy#1 always wanted to do everything her brother did. Her brother (at 10 years old!) sometimes would “borrow” a plug off their daddy’s tobacco and chew it. Lucy#1 talked him out of a “chew” one day. He gave it to her with the understanding that if she told anyone where she got it, he would beat her up.

It happens that Lucy#1 was playing on stilts that day. She was walking around the yard and enjoying her chew until she got distracted with her stilt-walking and instead of spitting out the tobacco juice, she swallowed it!

Naturally, after swallowing the tobacco juice, Lucy#1 ended up leaning against the house (still on her stilts), and lost her breakfast, as well as anything that may have been left from any meal the previous day or previous week. She retched and retched, so violently, so much, and loudly that her babysitter came out to check on her.

When queried, all she would tell the babysitter was that she didn’t feel well, so she ended up spending the rest of the day in bed being pampered and treated for an upset tummy.

Her brother made fun of her for swallowing the juice, washed his hands of the whole thing, and never gave her any more tobacco to chew.

As an aside, Lucy#1 was extremely athletic and could do any physical activity. She was small, but she could play all sports very well and could hula-hoop, jump on a pogo stick, walk on stilts, etc. She put all my friends to shame playing basketball when I was in junior high and high school, and I would have flunked every sport in P.E. without her constant tutoring. She was amazing!! I have never understood how I can look just like her, yet have absolutely zero natural physical ability.

The Scent of the Season

When she was six and I was twelve, my sister got a dog. One of our uncles gave it to her, I think because the dog could outsmart him. The dog was a toy fox terrier named Pepper. He was unbelievably cute – he looked like a tiny white and black deer – and amazingly smart. He was feisty; he had a hilarious personality and a thirst for adventure.

He also really, really liked to annoy me.

In his defense, I think the only reason he liked to annoy me is that I didn’t like him. I was just not a dog-person. I thought he was adorable and smart; I loved him in the abstract. I just didn’t want him on my lap or in my room, and on car trips, I didn’t want him snuggled up next to me.

I think Pepper originally wanted to be with me because he had hung out with my cousin before he came to live with us, and I was her general size and shape. However, once he figured out I didn’t want him on me or around me, he clearly thought, “Hmmm. I can have some fun with that.”

Pepper was mainly an outside dog, but he was allowed to come inside during cold weather. Anytime he was in the house, he would make a beeline for my bedroom. He did not enter the bedroom, though. He was too smart for that. He would sit just outside my bedroom door, so close that it would bump his nose if I closed the door, but still in the hallway so I couldn’t say, “Pepper, get out of my room.” He would sit there and watch me. That’s all, just sit and watch. It annoyed the daylights out of me for some reason unknown to me today, and I would eventually break under the pressure and yell, “Colene, call your dog!!!!” Colene would call, “Pepper!” and he would bound off to play with her. (There was one notable occasion, still famous in our family, when Colene was actually hiding under my bed so she could jump out and scare me. Pepper was in his usual pose in my doorway when I arrived. I immediately yelled, “Colene, call your dog!!!” and from under my bed came a tiny, tentative voice: “Pepper?”)

Anyway, since it is usually cold(er) in Austin in December, Pepper was often in the house during the Christmas season. He was in his glory. He strutted around the house. He examined the Christmas tree. He examined the gifts under the Christmas tree.

And, every year, he peed on at least one of my Christmas presents.

Only on my presents. Never on anyone else’s presents.

Always, always on my presents.

Our house had hardwood floors and Lucy#1 and Leroy had to re-polish the floor in the living room every new year because the peed-upon wrapping paper would lose its dye and stain the floor. Every year. No one ever caught him in the midst of his villainy, but every year when I opened my presents on Christmas morning, at least one of them would have telltale signs of an encounter with Pepper.

The Christmas that still makes us howl with laughter (although, believe me, my original howls were not laughter) was the year Grandma gave me a box of scented candles for Christmas. Yes, that’s right; there were scented candles in a box under the tree for me. And yes, that’s also right; Pepper peed on them. I don’t remember now what scents they were originally, but by the time I opened the package . . . well, let’s just say the original scent was not apparent.

Pepper and I battled it out until I left for college. I missed him when I left, and while I still didn’t really want him on my lap when I returned for weekends and holidays, I was a little softer-hearted about having him in my room. (He still peed on my Christmas gifts, though.) Eventually I grew up, and Pepper and I maintained a reasonable friendship. When I’d go over to visit the parents, I’d go out and pet Pepper and chit-chat with him. Pepper was part of our family for 16 years, and we all took it very hard when he died.

I guess Pepper’s “mark” is as much a part of our holiday tradition as the tree and the fudge, and he is still making our Christmas memories merry.

 

If that were my tree . . . .

Our family has pretty much always celebrated the season with eclectic Christmas tree. Lots of multicolored lights, all the ornaments we own, silver icicles, sometimes even flocking were on our tree. Eclectic is what we always had and we loved the whole gaudy thing. Decorating was a walk down memory lane, seeing all the ornaments collected throughout the years, rushing to find and our hang our own personal favorites.

We deviated only once in my memory.

Sometime in the early 70s, we decided we would have a theme for our Christmas tree – we would celebrate with a blue and silver tree. It would be very wintery, almost icy. It would be so amazing to have such a cool-looking tree in the heat of an Austin, Texas, winter. We switched out all the bulbs until we had strings of blue and white lights. We shopped for new ornaments, all blue and silver. We decorated our theme tree and it was everything we had hoped. Stunning! Artistic! Beautifully modern!

The actual decorating was a little bit of a bummer because the treasured ornaments we had hung every Christmas were absent, but it was fun watching the silver and blue ornaments, the silver and white lights, and the silver icicles come together into icy beauty. We liked it!!

Grandma (Lucy#1’s mom) came to our house for Christmas that year. We always enjoyed having her with us. She was a barrel of laughs, always willing to tell us stories of her youth, always thrilled to cook us meals and do lots of Christmas baking, including her famous Mogen-David-wine-laced fruitcake.  (If you don’t like fruitcake, it’s because you never had my grandma’s fruitcake. ‘Nuff said. J)

When Grandma arrived we could not wait to show her our gorgeous blue and silver Christmas tree. She studied it for a moment, then said, “I always have red lights on my Christmas tree.”

“We usually do, too, Grandma, but this is a theme tree. We want it to be just silver and blue. Isn’t it pretty?”

“Yes, but it needs some red lights.”

She didn’t tell us we were wrong; she didn’t make fun of our silvery tree. But, every day when Grandma passed by our tree, she would say, “If that were my tree, I’d put some red lights on it.”

 

That comment’s become an in-joke for my sister and me. If something is just a little bit off, one of us will say to the other, “If that were my tree, I’d put some red lights on it.” If we see a pre-lit tree, all white lights and glittering with shiny ornaments -- “If that were my tree, I’d put some red lights on it.” Just a few days ago, I found some cross-stitched ornaments I made for my parents in 1985 or 1986. I texted a photo to my sister, with the envelope I mailed them in (which is where Lucy#1 stored them every year), saying, “Wow! Look what I found.” And my sister texted back, “If that were my tree, I’d put some red lights on it!”

Memories. They’re the best!

 

Christmas Memories

December and I have a love-hate relationship. I love December because it’s cold(er) outside, Christmas music is everywhere, houses are lit up with pretty lights, lovely cards are in my mailbox, cookies!!, and no one looks at me funny if I say I’m gearing up for a weekend of A Christmas Story, Scrooge, The Santa Clause, and Die Hard. (Okay, so they do look at me funny about Die Hard, but it takes place at Christmas, there are Christmas carols, and doesn't Bruce Willis wish the bad guy a Merry Christmas? That's right. Ha!) I hate December because I’ve been listening to Christmas music everywhere since just after Halloween, I’m always behind on sending my Christmas cards (raise your hand if you have even received a card from me in the last five years, yes both of you, raise a hand), the traffic is terrible all over town, my jeans don’t want to zip up, and the forecast is for an ice storm so we’ve had to cancel our office Christmas party. Fortunately for my seasonal cheer, the things I love about December are so very loveable that they completely overshadow the things I hate. And I do love Christmas – celebrating baby Jesus coming to save us, Santa Claus flying in on the 24^th, Christmas trees!

Having spent my youth and first 20 adult years in Austin, I equate brake lights on the highway during bleak, rainy weather with Christmas. (Now you know what December is like in Austin.) I got really excited driving home the other day because it was cold and kind of drizzling and the roads were getting slick so everyone was driving on their brakes. All I could think was, “Yay, Christmas is coming!” The minute I got home, I put Christmas CDs in my car. J

This Christmas could be a bummer because I had so many Christmas plans for Lucy#1 and me. I was looking forward to us putting up a tree, singing along with the Christmas music, decorating sugar cookies, baking chocolate pie, watching Christmas movies, and just celebrating together all month long while we reminisced about Christmases past and laughed over the good old stories and fun times.

Phooey.

But, I have decided to refuse to let gloom overcome the joy of the season or the joy of Lucy#1. So, I’m going to share some of the memorable Christmas moments our family has had over the years, and I’m going to remember these moments and more when I miss Lucy#1 this Christmas season.

The first really outstanding Christmas I remember, I was five. Lucy#1 made cookies and brownies and fudge, and then, amazingly, on Christmas Eve no one policed my consumption of those goodies. I ate all the cookies and brownies and fudge I could hold. Yum!! I was in sugar-induced heaven . . . . right up until that moment in middle of the night when those cookies started coming back up. I didn’t go straight for the bathroom when I realized I was going to be sick – I headed for my mama – so I tossed up those cookies right in front of my parents’s bedroom door. My parents were thrilled, of course, and my daddy cleaned up the floor while my mama cleaned up the kid. She put me in clean pajamas and they tucked me back into my warm sugar-plum bed. I slept a little while, then, ruh-roh! More cookies coming up! I went straight to the bathroom that time, but wasn’t fast enough. Repeat prior activities by all. Then, wait half an hour and repeat. Then, ditto, until I ran out of clean pajamas. My mother (who had apparently peeked while Santa was there) went down and got me some nice, brand-new jammies from under the tree. I don’t know how many times I have heard about me saying, “Isn’t it good that Santa brought me new pajamas? It’s like he knew I would need them tonight.” (In case you are wondering, I was never allowed free reign at the Christmas goodies table again.)

The next huge Christmas event in my memory concerns my sister. She was almost three. She loved her Christmas gifts. She loved each of them so much that she had to be forced to open the next one. First she saw toys from Santa. She started playing with one. Mama and Daddy had to take it away from her and show her the next toy. She played with that. I showed her a wrapped package. She opened it. It was a little outfit. She put it on (without help, because she was fiercely independent and wouldn’t allow anyone to assist her). Then we talked her into opening the next gift. It was a book. She sat down to “read” it. It took her what felt to me like h-o-u-r-s to open her gifts. Each year, someone would mention that Christmas morning, and our whole family would chuckle about how cute she was and how appreciative of every gift.

Our first Christmas in Germany was amazing. We lived in a little German town, upstairs from a wonderful German couple and their youngest son. They invited us to join them for their Christmas Eve celebration. Most of their children were grown with families of their own, and they all came over. The house was packed with people, all speaking German (which, by the way, sounds really rowdy if you don't understand it)! We all sang Christmas carols (not all in the same language). Neighbors came by to visit and have a cookie and/or a drink. (They had really good cookies, although I was allowed to eat only a few.) I’d never seen a madhouse of activity like that! What crazy Christmas joy spilling over onto everyone! We joined them every Christmas Eve while we were in Germany, and it was a fantastic night every year.

The Christmas I was 11, Santa brought my dad a race car set. Whoooeeeee! We all enjoyed those race cars! A young couple (in their early 20s) who lived next door came over for Christmas dinner, and we all raced those cars all day long (and for years afterward).

The first year Freddy joined us for Christmas was a hoot. Freddy is from Columbia; he was attending Texas A&M and worked where Lucy#1 worked. He couldn’t go home for Christmas, so he joined our family for the day. My sister and I (in our 20s at the time) adopted him as the brother we never had, and roped him into all our crazy Christmas traditions and activities. We ended up playing Monopoly that afternoon. Freddy was not familiar with the game and didn’t feel comfortable playing, so he offered to be our Banker. He found out all about us that day! I doubt the bank was actually robbed, but I think there may have been a lot of wheeling, dealing, wheedling, and whining in addition to other Monopoly shenanigans, and possibly some boasting and jeering. I’m pretty sure Freddy thought our whole family was nuts, but he came back every year. (We didn’t subject poor Freddy to Monopoly again, but he did play some pretty cut-throat Uno with us through the years!)

My first Christmas in Oklahoma City, Lucy#1, my sister, and my nephew came up to spend Christmas with me. We had so much fun! Since I had come to OKC from the mountains of New Mexico, where I lived in a solar-powered house with a woodstove in the living room as the only heat source, I was used to much cooler temperatures (inside as well as outside) than was my poor family, and it never occurred to me that 64 degrees was not the perfect indoor temperature. I did notice they were wearing sweaters while I was in lightweight clothing, but hey! Lucy#1 was always cold, even in the summertime, and Susan was enjoying wearing her Christmas sweaters, right? And my nephew did stay snuggled up on the couch with an afghan, but golly, he was a kid and had his game boy or whatever and I love to snuggle up with a book -– same thing, right? Well . . . .  no. I was wrong on all counts. After they were safe and warm back in Texas, my sister told me that she and Lucy#1 had considered offering to pay my electric bill if I would just turn the heat on!!

I haven’t put my Christmas tree up yet, but that’s on my weekend to-do list. I’ll pull out the old Andy Williams Christmas CD, and Billboard’s top Christmas songs, and maybe something really fun like the soundtrack to the Christmas program John Denver did with the Muppets. Or maybe my Twisted Christmas CDs. (Did you know that House of the Rising Sun works perfectly with the tune to Oh Little Town of Bethlehem? Try it. You’ll see. There is a house in New Orleans . . . . Really, it works!)

I’ll sing Christmas songs at the top of my lungs while I decorate, then I’ll admire my handiwork and toast Lucy#1 with some hot chocolate. I’ll miss her, but at the same time I’ll see her in all my Christmas memories. That works, too.

Well, that's a bummer.

I’m so very sad to report that the Two Lucys have had their last earthly adventure together. Lucy#1 departed this world just before midnight on Sunday, October 6.

Her departure came after a week in the hospital and four days at home on hospice. She ran a low-grade fever at home for three days, but said she felt fine and refused to go to the doctor. On the fourth day, when her fever shot up over 100, we went to the hospital. While staying overnight for observation due to a diagnosis of bronchitis, everything went downhill very suddenly. Final diagnosis was a massive MRSA infection in her heart, along with all kinds of other things wrong with the heart. Her only treatment option was open-heart surgery to repair a hole and several broken valves, put in some stents, and more --and no one thought that was really an option since she was so frail and her lungs were so weak.

I’m going to keep writing here, even though I’m just one Lucy now. There are some stories I’d like to tell about Lucy#1’s days in the hospital, because she definitely did not lose her sense of humor while she was ill! I’d also like to tell some stories about Lucy#1’s life before she joined me in Oklahoma, and maybe some stories about all of us who loved her.

Lucy#1 was my favorite Lucy. She is gone from me now. I miss her. That’s a bummer!

 

On the other hand, I was blessed with her as my mom for many years and my housemate for several months, and I have many, many happy, sad, beautiful, annoying, wonderful, and hilarious memories of her. Those memories will ensure she will always be with me until we meet again in Heaven. That’s a blessing!

One last thing: I’m not a preachy person, and I don’t usually go around telling people what to do. But I am going to say this anyway. I’m saying it in all caps because I feel that strongly about it.

DO NOT SMOKE.

IF YOU ALREADY SMOKE, STOP.  STOP RIGHT NOW!!

IF YOU HAVE NEVER SMOKED, DON’T START! EVER!

IF SOMEONE YOU KNOW SMOKES, ENCOURAGE THAT PERSON TO STOP RIGHT NOW!!

Lucy#1 started smoking when she was 19 or 20, and even while she was in the hospital with an oxygen saturation of only 90% (even with an oxygen mask, only 90%), she told the doctors and nurses that the first thing she would do when she got home was smoke a cigarette. (There’s a story about that, but I’ll tell you later.) Her lungs were so damaged that 90% oxygen saturation is the very best she could ever have, and while 90% sounds like a pretty decent percentage, trust me that it is not. (If you don’t trust me, ask a doctor or nurse.) Lucy#1 struggled to breathe in the best of times. For several years, she would gasp for breath after walking across a room. She had to have morphine at the end of her life, just to help her body relax enough to breathe. Her lungs were so damaged that her body was panicked because of lack of air. Yes, even while she was asleep, her body struggled to take in enough air. And yes, she had oxygen blowing into her nose to give her air, but her body still struggled. (And the oxygen machine was set on 4. Ask a doctor or nurse what that means. It is not good.)

I am not exaggerating when I say Lucy#1 would probably have lived many more years had she not smoked. Her heart was damaged, her aorta was damaged, her lungs were destroyed – all by smoking!  

 

So, live life, enjoy life, love those around you – and love yourself as well. Don’t smoke!!!