“Yeah Right”

I never got to say how much we enjoyed knowing George, and how lucky we feel to have had him in our lives when I first wrote about him in “Mailing A Leg.”

The way we met George pretty much sums up the type of person he was. Hubby was checking his mom into “rehab” after a fall. Unfortunately, these places are filled with folks who have nowhere to go, most with advanced memory issues and a few perfectly fine mentally, like George. He came wheeling in with his walker like the welcome committee. He showed them the ropes and said to hubby, “Come to my room and I’ll give you the list of channels.” Admittedly, hubby’s first thought was, uh oh. But then he realized, he does only have one leg; I can probably outrun him.

George is gone a year now and we still reminisce about him, like how he would sometimes put the entire email message in the subject line; how he would steal Golf Digest from dialysis for hubby; and how he would be all set up with napkin in lap and fork in hand when hubby arrived with food. And we still quote his favorite expression, “Yeah, right.” (Said with great northeastern sarcasm as George was from Connecticut.)

Another sweet memory is when we had George over to make onion rings, as cooking was the thing he missed most. He planned it for months and insisted on buying all the ingredients – the biggest size of everything with the hopes of doing it many times.

George loved watching cooking shows and had us order things on Amazon to try to improve the food in the rehab. He even talked of starting his own YouTube channel, “Cooking with Nothing.”

We have great memories of George and feel fortunate to have known him. His infectious enthusiasm was outweighed only by his appreciation for every little thing we did, which was evident the first time I went to his room. “Look around,” he said, “everything I have is because of Joe.”