Redneck Review!
No. 241 - 12/9/2019
Insights old age and a bout with problems sometimes comes  to an old Red Neck who is inclined to take far too many things for granted!
My wife Marianne's sudden bout with a serious infection as she nears her 81st birthday, and my upcoming age of 83 also coming soon,  have combined to make us realize that life can change quickly and maybe even death might come much sooner than expected!
Marianne has been a healthy, hard working woman all her life, and except for childbirth, one gall bladder surgery, and a trip or two to a hospital for other minor ailments, has survived the stress of her 80 years with headaches now and then.  So her recent attack by a blood infection putting her in hospitals in Cottonwood and at Kootenai Health in Coeur d'Alene, has brought the two of us back to reality!  Things change as you age and endure sickness! The good news is that her improved condition is allowing her to return to St. Mary's hospital for rehab and recuperation on Monday!
Reality has been driven home to myself also, as my own 82+ years of life have been blessed, with only two trips to a hospital really, one for an appendix problem when young and then a trip to repair a battered back going back to stupid things done when young!
The bottom line is that our stay in hospitals dealing with infection pain for over two weeks and the care she has received there,  plus the need to travel and to be at her bedside nearly 24 hours a day,  brings sharply into focus what life is all about, and the end which inevitably comes to all we mortals who enjoy it on this earth for what really is a short amount of time! So bear with me as I review some of the thoughts which have crowded into my mind the last several weeks!
1)Life is a miracle, and is fragile, and is short when compared to the age of this planet called earth which mysteriously has supported billions of other lives like ours while floating around in a galaxy of billions of other stars and planets all seemingly without life!  Mystery!  Why us, why you and me, why just one hunk of earth with everything needed to supply a place for us to live and die after a very short lifetime?  How can our civilization consider so casually the practice of snuffing out the lives of others who mysteriously begin life in the womb of a mother?  Why I have asked myself have I been blessed with a decision by my parents to let me live, and thrive and pass on life to several generations to come?  Was it simply a coin flip that decided my and my wife's destiny to live or die early at the will of an abortionist mother and doctor? Others who read this may also ask, why am I alive today, and not suffer the fate of those who were snuffed out in the womb?  Why am I still alive today when daily the obituaries in every paper notify us solemnly of others who have passed on, some early in life and others late? And of course, along with the above must come the inevitable question: After death, WHAT?
2)But there is more, much more!  Much more that myself and all of us I believe are inclined to take for granted!  Is it not miraculous that our earth, this roaming planet in a huge universe, can continue to produce the fuel we need to drive our cars and heat our homes?  Especially when 60 years ago the "experts" were telling us that fossil fuels would be exhausted  by 2000? And what about the enormous amount of water used daily throughout the world? Is that supply really infinite?  Oh yes, will the food we need and eat always be there? And really, are there not also many other near miraculous things we take for granted daily?  More on this topic next week!
Jake Wren

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