OUCH! Covid Can Inspire as well as Kill

by Reg Green

Covid-19 has put nurses into the homes of elderly people in a new way. Sometimes what they see shocks them, but it can also be inspiring. A nurse at our local hospital told me that she witnessed one such event recently. An old man, close to the end, with his family at his bedside brought tears to everyone’s eyes when he roused himself to whisper, “You thought I’d been forced to get rid of all our investments during the recession, but I held on and things turned around. And so, dear (to his daughter) I’m leaving you that row of houses on Foothill Boulevard and you (his son) the apartment house just behind them. Best of all (to his wife, Stella) I kept my share in the office block.” He died soon after and the nurse, deeply moved and searching for words of consolation, mumbled something about them all being well provided for. “Well provided for?” Stella said. “He had a paper route.”