The last week has been long. My wife and I have been deeply invested in helping care for a terminally ill neighbor and his wife who is a strong woman, but about at the end of her strength. During this time, we’ve actually been in their house more than our own. I’m retired and available to cut and run over at a moment’s notice and so I do. This poor gentleman, in addition to some form of pervasive stage 4 cancer, a broken back that never healed right, and myriad other problems, ultimately has been overtaken by dementia as well… so he wants to escape and run from his caregivers whom he now sees as tormentors and jailers. To be conscious is for him to try to flee… except he can get no farther than to immediately fall and geometrically increase his own suffering. I’m 6’4” and 250 pounds… he was a robust man who no longer breaks 90 pounds if that. All I need to do is stand there and it keeps him a little more safe. ANYWAY, on about the third day of in-extremis difficulty, I caught an hour break… a visiting nurse and hospice social worker were there to pace us all a spell. I was pretty numb and worn out as it was… but somehow reached for my pipe… and about a flake and a half left of aged MB HH Old Dark Fired gifted to me by our most excellent Cobguy a while back with a sample of Moztek Strang and a couple others. ONLY PIPE GUYS & GALS truly understand and appreciate what came next: a sense of solace and peace unlike anything else. Suffering and exhaustion and the truth of those things were not diminished, nor was the reality of it all… but there for an hour, I floated on wisps of smoke in the garage, gaining strength, reviewing perspective, seeing the long view, and just being detached and content for a few moments, before going back into the fray. To me, Old Dark Fired is one of the great jewels of our tobacconistic treasure chest… and with a little age on it, the deepness, complexity, and richness of the layers of the smoke are like few others. What a fine respite it was. And another thank you to cobguy and our pipester community here for celebrating the simple pleasures of these gifts every day. [Neighbor was admitted to an in-patient hospice unit on Monday. Nobody actually thought he’d even survive the trip but he’s still hanging on by a thread, but now is basically comatose. I don’t suspect it will be long but you never know. And so it goes.]
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