Читать книгу Charlie's Heart - Jr. Charles W. Truitt - Страница 4

My mother was a small woman and the most courageous person I have ever known. She was divorced in her thirties and left to raise five kids, one with Down Syndrome, and the youngest was 6 months old. I never heard an unkind word come from her mouth. To me, there was no woman with a bigger heart or stronger foundation. I often said that my mother was so secretive, I believed she worked for the CIA. She had heart bypass surgery in her fifties while I was serving away in the military - I found out several years laters. As I wrote this book, she (at 76) bravely battled yet passed away from liver cancer. She fought the good fight every day. If I am half as strong, I may live forever.

Although my father left us when we were just kids, I learned in my later years that he had coronary heart disease and had heart bypass surgery at an early age. It soon became apparent coronary heart disease was the main killer in our family followed by cancer in a few instances.

But there was a time that I was immortal, or at least I thought I was. Maybe more accurately, I knew people died, but death didn’t apply to me. Like any other kid growing up in Hampton, Virginia, I climbed the highest trees that I could find in my neighborhood, played war in the woods with bb guns (without eye protection), rode my bike with no helmet, drank out of the garden hose, played sandlot football without protective pads, and yes, ate anything and everything I wanted. To me, if it was food, it must be good for me. I was the king of my world, a world oblivious to disease and death.

Somewhere along the line I know I became aware of death. I guess from an early age we all have this basic knowledge or understanding of the existence of illness and death. However, I think we see it as something that happens to other people or the elderly. It does not apply to us.

Regardless of all of that, I must have been immortal. I didn’t dwell on death, and very few people around me were dying. And for some reason, if it did happen; everyone said it was such a shame that they were taken at such an early age. People died in a car accident or something totally unexpected. They didn’t die of diseases or at least I don’t remember any that did.

I proudly served in the United States Army for more than 20 years. Even during that time, people died around me, but not from a health condition. It was some catastrophic event.

But that would all change……