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Stability in Body, Anguish in Spirit

My mother is in the hospital and is responding to treatment to quell her edema. Her congestive heart failure for some reason has changed. It could be due to the new medications (Cordarone is the primary suspect in my book.) or she could be having an infection (they are giving her antibiotic injections) or it could be other factors. She has been good about eating and drinking consistent amounts however. Thoughts and prayers that she will recover AND remain well continue to be appreciated.

I missed writing about it, and I missed celebrating it as well, but Friday November 24th was my departed and beloved father's birthday. My normal routine is to drive to the cemetary where he is buried and to sit beside his gravesite as I smoke two bowls of his favorite pipe tobacco. The first pipe is one of his that I have inherited, the other is one of my grandfather's that my father passed down to me so long ago. I miss my father greatly and I wish he were here to talk with and to just be together with. The various pipes of his and the ones from my grandfather are so blessed and cherished to me that I keep them in a special, hinged and velvet lined box in my den. I take them out and handle and polish them frequently, but only indulge with them with tobacco leaf on special occasions. My father's birthday is one of those very few, and perhaps most special of those days. I unfortunately did not carry out that ritual, for the first time in the 12 years since his death. He would be 83 now. He was a great man. In my mind's eye, I can still see his furry face, and his bushy eyebrows, and his owlish glasses.

PipeTobacco