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Cheryl Hughes: That Generation

I stayed some with my stepmom, in Taylorsville, last week.  She had hip-replacement surgery.  She’s eighty-two years old and is still one of the strongest women both physically and mentally I’ve ever known.  She had surgery on a Monday, went from the hospital to rehab the following Saturday, and from there to her home by the next Saturday.  When I got there on the following Tuesday, she could do just about anything she needed to do, provided she didn’t get far from her walker—doctor’s orders.  Mom has always been like that.  Most people from that generation have always been like that. 
    I have always referred to my parents’ generation as “that generation.”  Tom Brokaw called them, “The Greatest Generation,” in a book by the same name.  The book focuses on the feats my parents’ generation accomplished—living through the Depression, fighting in WWII, and coming home to build a new America during the postwar era.  The Depression molded them then they molded America into the gritty sort of place where hard work produced rewards and was also a reward unto itself.  I remember Garey’s dad, J.D., telling my kids when they were little, “Hang with Papa, and he’ll teach you how to work.”  I didn’t realize at the time that work had to be taught.  In hindsight, I’ve realized he was right.  It does.
    While I was with Mom, she took a pain pill only if the therapist was coming to the house, in order to be sure she could do the exercises.  “I don’t want to get addicted to them,” she said.  Garey’s mom, Agnes, is the same way.  She will barely take an aspirin for fear of developing an addiction.  That generation’s greatest fear is dependency, whether it be on medicine or relatives or the government.  A box of frozen meals arrived one day by USPS, and Mom got really upset about it, because she thought the “powers that be” thought she was either unable to or too worthless to cook for herself.  My sister, who is a lawyer, explained to her that the meals were either part of her insurance plan or part of her Medicare plan, and not to be insulted by the assistance. 
    Mom kept getting calls from her insurance company asking her the same questions over and over, and even though she is usually a patient person, she told them that she had already answered those questions and she wouldn’t be answering them again.  I guess the woman on the other end of the call decided to ask a question that hadn’t been posed to mom, so she asked if mom thought she could walk three miles with her walker.  Mom told her, not yet, but she expected to be able to do so by the end of her five weeks of therapy—and she probably will.  The woman told her to have a nice day. 
    While I was with Mom, we caught up on some of my family I don’t see often.  I have some step-cousins in Meade County, and she told me about what they and their children were doing these days.  Most of Mom’s family is from Meade County, and the conversation turned to the F5 tornado that wiped out Brandenburg in 1974.  I was a freshman at Western at the time, and I remember watching the coverage on the news.  It was horrific. 
    I didn’t know that she and Dad drove to the area because they had been unable to get in touch with anyone by phone.  My dad was the county sheriff of Spencer County at the time, which got him through to places where others weren’t allowed.  Thirty-one people were killed that day in the small town of Brandenburg, some hurled into the nearby river.  Boards were driven into the bodies of cows at the Dairy at the top of the hill.  The school was turned into a morgue.  Mom said Dad was allowed in to view the bodies in order to make sure none of Mom’s kin were among the dead.  It’s not surprising to me that my dad did that.  That’s what that generation did—whatever it took, just to look out for one another. 
    Sometimes, my brothers gripe about the way my mom won’t leave her cell phone on or how she won’t take medicine because she reads about the side effects printed on the bottle.  When my dad was alive, they would get aggravated at him because he was so resistant to new technology.  “You know how they are,” they often say, referring to “that generation.”  Yeah, we all know how they are, and we’re lucky to have had them.

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