Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Tubes, nurses and broken hearts

I was wandering through old blog entries and found myself chuckling away at this:

In the meantime Ben is trying to inflict grievous bodily harm on his carers. His night nurse is sure he has a hand injury from Ben crushing his hand in one slightly more wakeful episode, It included pushing and shoving while he was quite confused and trying to escape from his bed with his startling number of tubes, a couple of nurses and his father trailing behind him. 

I think it was the irony of the memory that makes me chuckle. Here was
Ben, only days away from leaving this mortal body behind as it had
given up on him and yet he could still command it enough to cause
comments about his surprising strength.

It reminds me of a childhood memory that was also included in a prior
blog entry:

When Ben and Tim were four and two respectively we were invited to
have lunch with a couple who were business associates of Chris's. We
had a vigorous and noisy lunch time as we tried to encourage both boys
to display table manners suited for the fragile tolerance level of a
young childless couple. As soon as Ben had finished eating he was up
and away from the table, charging all over the house. The husband said
to me as he watched our little human cannonball "Ben will break
arms…but that one, Tim, he will break hearts." 

Looking back now I can say that Ben didn't break anyone's arm as far as I know in all the high energy living he crammed into his short 23 years. But he sure ended up breaking many hearts.

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