Mama Lucy: A True Story I love garage sales. It is my mother in me I think that likes other people’s stuff. The uniqueness attracts us, as you see the history of others and the style and taste of other families. Today was no different except I met the most amazing seventy something year old beauty named Mama Lucy. Mama Lucy and her husband Arthur have a home in a neighborhood just north of mine. They live in a modest home that, at the moment, was largely spread over the front patio for the garage sale. The weather was nice, normally in Tucson most garage sales roll up their tables at ten in the morning because of the heat. However, this November day found us cloudy and mild with a one hundred percent chance of something special about to happen. I was in a somber mood as I was battling a melancholy, which had vexed me for days. A nice set of tires with chrome rims caught my eye in the driveway so I pulled over to take a look. While in the drive way I notice the rest of the sale inside the little court yard patio so I entered to look around. A woman was speaking in Spanish on the telephone but bid me welcome to come in and look. She was elderly but still had a blonde tint to her shoulder length hair, which was pulled back and in a ponytail. She was short and normally constructed for her age yet it was easy to see that in her youth, she had been a beauty of some rapport and that beauty still showed through in her smile and in her dancing brown eyes. I walked around the patio and saw nothing that interested me in the way of buying, but I notice a large amount of older men’s clothing. There were shoes and the like for sale that were easily forty years old, but well preserved. It appeared that Mama Lucy was the only one home, which I learned, was the case as I got to know her in the following minutes. The Spirit began to alert me to the fact that something was about to occur and that I should pay attention. This is the way of the follower of Christ in paths of discernment. She concluded her telephone conversation and we began talking about a colorful women’s jacket, which caught my eye, having my wife in mind as the recipient. As we spoke in Spanish, the jacket fell to the ground from where it had been hanging on a board. We both moved to pick it up and I rehung it on the board. Then the conversation went to English and she showed her curiosity about where I was from because my Spanish dialect is rapid and with an Oklahoma twang, so she had no idea from where I hailed. I confessed to learning the language at the hands of the government, which lead us to talking about Arthur her husband. I was curious if Arthur had recently passed away from all of the older clothes I observed on the tables, but I sensed that she would tell me that if she wished. Arthur had served in the Air Force and had been retired with one hundred percent disability due to radiological exposure. He had been a part of a recovery team that had recovered and decontaminated some nuclear warheads in Spain after an air-to-air collision. Since that time, he had been battling cancer that had developed about a year after the incident. Being the student of radiological detection and military history that I am, I was completely intrigued. She told me of how they had been struggling for so long and Arthur had largely given up hope and was given three months to live. Then he decided to take part in a study at MD Anderson in Houston. The treatment restored him and he was largely in remission. She was pleased at his status as he had struggle for so long and had been so very ill. They had driven to Houston from Tucson every twenty-eight days for two years to get the treatments. It was an amazing tale of hope and recovery and a miracle to say the least. We had learned that each other were Christians during our discussions and that vernacular began to come into play in both languages as we switched back and forth from Spanish to English depending on the words we needed. After coming home, I researched the tale of the aircraft incident and found that she was completely honest. On January 17th 1966, an American B52G Bomber and a KC 135 Refueler collided during air-to air-refueling near Palomares, Spain. (bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18689132) Arthur had been on that recovery team and if he contracted cancer the year after then that meant that he had been battling it off and on since 1967, 46 years. During that time he became an elementary school teacher, raised his children, and for a short time his granddaughters as well. He also completed graduate studies to become a school principle. Arthur still does substitute teaching and that was where he was today. Make no mistake, I am going back to meet Arthur. I found Mama Lucy intriguing and amazing, but I found their story even more amazing. What a blessing to meet someone like this in our time. Just to share the same air for a moment was an honor to me that she would hardly understand.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 22:12:51 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015