A rose is a rose

I am trolling through older photos. Just found this one (which I may have already posted) and wanted to share it with you.

My dear friend, Ann was having a pacemaker installed today (Monday) at the same hospital in which I recently was a patient. Ann is about 12 years senior to me, and was from Denmark many years ago. I was happy to have a phone conversation with her Sunday evening, while she just was lying around waiting for her procedure. I met her at my little church here in Black Mountain NC. She's been very active all her life, and the one interesting thing I want to share about her is about her interest in the sport of fencing. She had actually learned a bit about it before her immigration to the US.

She loves to tell her stories. When she first arrived in the US as a young woman, she took a fencing class, where she met a young man that she became "smitten with."  They went out a few times, and then he moved from Washington DC to California (for work I think.) Ann decided that she would also go to CA, and proceeded to try to find the young man. That was quite an adventure, and she eventually did. They were married and have raised their children. Ann lost Jerry to heart disease several years ago. She now has 14 great grand children, with the latest having been born last week. She herself trained as a respiratory therapist, and knows quite a bit about medical terminology.

I hope she has a good recovery from this procedure.

When we again can return to our little church community, I'll be looking forward to one of her loving hugs...and to give it back to her as well.

Today's Quote:
When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatize those who let people die, not those who struggle to live.

-Sarah Kendzior, journalist and author (b. 1978)