From a young age I have always been a big fan of sweets.  I have a raging sweet tooth.  Apparently I ate a lot of sweets when I was younger because at one point I had 13 cavities at once.  Yes, I know!!  I don’t remember the dentist drilling all the holes, so I expect they put me out for that one.  I would hope anyways.

That little incident caused my parents to take away all manner of sweets from my weak conspiring teeth.  Well water doesn’t have the fluoride in it, so that may have been part of the problem.  After that I don’t remember getting sweets very often.  What I do remember is Oscar and his gum.

Oscar was my cousin’s grandpa, and really the only grandpa I had ever known.  My mom’s father died before I was born, and my dad’s suffered from Alzheimer’s so he usually didn’t know who I was.

Our families all lived closed together, in a country mile sort of way.  When we rode our horses over to my cousin’s house, we would sometimes make it over to their grandparents.  I knew that Grandpa P. usually had some gum on hand, and I’d turn my big baby blues on him and sweetly ask, “Do you have any gum, Grandpa?”.  He readilyobliged.  I remember him handing over the gum with a smile and a twinkle in his eyes.  Years later he would always bring that up, every time I saw him, and he told me he kept a stash of gum, just in case.  He also loved hugs and kisses.  🙂

Oscar’s funeral was this past Saturday.  I hadn’t seen him in years, since we don’t live there anymore and he’s been in a nursing home.  Alzheimer’s had another victim.  His body just gave out finally with fluid on the lungs, a potential heart attack, and a lot of pain that the morphine couldn’t help.  Our carpenter, Vern, is one of his son’s and he was working at our house while his dad was going downhill.  I felt so bad that he didn’t make it to the hospital in time, as we are about 2 hours away from my hometown.

Life sometimes happens that way.  It gets in the way and all plans fail at some point.

The family joined together to celebrate a life well-lived, and another one of God’s children got his wings.  It was a beautiful day in the midst of many cloudy and rainy days.  The sun was out and the weather was mild.  The Fall colors were in full force.  He was buried in a little country graveyard that he had mowed and taken care of for many years.  It was a fitting send off to a soul full of sunshine.