My friend Sally was born in Ohio in 1929. Sally's mother was raised in an orphanage. I can't remember how her grandmother died, but her grandfather was killed in Cuba. Sally later tried to gather more information for her mother on her grandfather's death, but that leads to a later story. 

Sally's father was a mortician, and also ran an ambulance service. In those days, before trained EMT's, it was common for the mortuaries to run the ambulance service in town. I guess it was rather convenient when the patient died in route to the hospital. 

When Sally was 3 years old she was in Sunday School, and believed on Jesus as her personal Savior. She described that experience to me often, as she did nearly all I am writing. I heard these stories over and over again, especially as her illness progressed. I am writing all of this from memory, so where my memory lapses so will this story. Anyway, Sally told me in this way how she came to know Christ, " I was in Sunday School, and the teacher was showing us a picture of Jesus, and I just said to him that I believed in him, and wanted to be just like him, and wanted to follow him always." Though later in life, Sally rededicated herself to Christ, she always clung to her experience at the age of 3 as the moment she turned her life over to Christ. 

Sally had one older brother as her only sibling. Her brother was very ill as a young child, and was rather weak in constitution for much of his young life. Sally always felt that his illness caused her parents to spoil him rotten. As she and her brother grew up together her descriptions of their relationship was adversarial. He often did sneaky mean things to her behind her parents back. She particularly described him knocking her on top of the head, many, many times over the course of her childhood. Generally, her description sounded like living with an older brother to me, but Sally took it very personally, as she was a very sensitive person. 

Sally, was a person who often wore her heart on her sleeve. She cared deeply for people. It was her greatest asset, making her this tremendously empathetic individual, but it also got her into lots of trouble, because she put her faith in unfaithful people too easily. Sally always had a hard time believing the worst about anyone, and because of that trait she made herself a target for the worst in others. Even at 80, her innocence and naivety about some subjects both comforted me, and astounded me at times. It comforted me, because in this ugly, awful, world, innocence is so precious. I've often wished that so much more of the world was like Sally, because the world would definitely be a better place for it, and life would have been much easier on her. However, unfortunately Sally was born into a world where avarice, and hatred were common place, and over the course of her life she surely felt the effects of the worst of it.

Sally's mother was a nurse, and she grew up surrounded by medical knowledge, some of which was in its infancy during Sally's growing up years. Things like penicillin and vaccines were just coming into use. They were considered breakthrough therapies, and some would say, changed the very course of modern life. 

Sally's mother was very concerned about germs, being a nurse. Sally found her mother's fears unwarranted and rather smothering. Sally developed an intense distrust of modern medicine as she went through life. This attitude was increased by the fact that there was a time that many of our mothers and grandmothers were addicted by their doctors to tranquilizers tranquilizers like Valium, during the 50's and 60's. There was a time when doctors decided that the hormonal ups and downs of womanhood could be controlled by drugs. The same thing is true now, only now the men get in on the act as well. Sadly, Sally's mother became deeply addicted to Valium over the course of years. Good reason to distrust the system I think.

Anyway, because of Sally's exposure to the medical world, she had an interesting view of the world. Sometime between the time Sally was 5 and 8 years of age, she had an adventure with one of her friends. Sally, like me, was an imaginative child, and also like me, it sometimes got her into trouble. In those days it was common place for little children to just run off and play. There was very little crime, and children were supposed to enjoy the sunshine and nature.

One day, Sally and one of her little girl friends decided to take a hike. The girls were out in the woods, and they came upon a patch of poison ivy. Sally decided that the girls needed poison ivy vaccines. So both girls ate a tiny leaf of poison ivy. Sally, who was never very allergic to poison ivy, had no ill effects, but her little friend wound up in the hospital with internal poison ivy, and nearly died. Needless to say the mother of the little girl never allowed Sally to play with her daughter again. 

When Sally was about 13 she started driving the ambulance for her father. She saw many accidents, and hauled many dead people to the mortuary. That experience had a sobering effect on an impressionable young lady. 

Sally and I both happened to love visiting old cemeteries. We often visited them together on warm afternoons. I love them for their history. Sally loved them because it was where she grew up, and she remembered them as being a peaceful, comforting place, where she often played as a child. Sally was never afraid of.death. To her, death was a natural progression of life, and she knew who held her eternal future. 


More later...