This is part one of a series about Dewey, who was 60 when he enrolled in outpatient hospice services with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Dewey and Tammie have been married for 32 years. Tammie loves her cats, “Dewey says I spend too much money on my cats. But I love my cats. I have seven that I feed outside, and now I have a raccoon.”
Dewey apparently loves salvaging and scrapping as much as Tammie loves her cats. One day Dewey was AWOL when I arrived for my scheduled social work visit. Tammie explained, “He’s probably out dumpster diving. His dad taught him. We once had a school bus with two beds built in it and the windows were painted black. We’d spend entire weekends salvaging in Columbus and come back with the bus loaded down. People in the wealthy neighborhoods would set out perfectly good stuff, like new, just because they were tired of it and wanted something different. Dewey even had a business card, and we almost rented a storage building in Columbus. We made good money.” Dewey and Tammie’s profits lend credibility to the proverb, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
During a subsequent visit Dewey told me, “I Worked in a junk yard for seven years in Marion. I enjoyed that job more than any job I’ve had. I worked with another guy and a small camper was our office. I Cut up railroad tanker cars with a torch. And we stripped cars for salvage before we crushed them. We took off the tires and the rims and took off anything that could explode when the car was being crushed. Almost every car had a treasure hidden in it, stereos, tools. I once found a toolbox full of tools.”
Dewey even constructed his beloved man-shed, beside their mobile home, with salvaged materials. One day Dewey invited me out for a tour. He showed me a wooden storage box he was building for someone, of course with salvaged materials. He showed me his collection of antique tools, old axes, picks, hand tools and commented, “They don’t make them like this no more. But it’s not just the tools that I appreciate, it’s the men who used them. Those were real men.”
When Dewey initially enrolled in hospice, he was having second thoughts. He was seriously considering firing us. Dewey admitted he had trust issues and was already distrusting and accusing us without a reason. He explained, ‘Hospice scares me. I want to get better. I want fixed. I did have a time when I felt sorry for myself, but I’m not going to just sit around the house. I can’t, I’m not made like that. My mom tells me I shouldn’t be out doing what I do, but I’m going to beat up and wear out this body. I just got my driver’s license renewed the other day and they asked me if I wanted to be an organ doner. I told them that I hope that everything is worn out by then.”
Dewey’s determination to live until the day he dies, to wear out his body, reminds me of a line from a song by Neil Young, “It’s better to burn out than it is to rust,” (“My My, Hey Hey”). It also reminds me of the determination of the Apostle Paul to fight the good fight, finish the race and keep the faith, (2 Timothy 4:7). Paul was whipped five times with thirty-nine lashes, beaten with rods three times, stoned and left for dead, frequently jailed for preaching the gospel, shipwrecked three times, endured sleep deprivation and exhaustion, and according to the Eusebius, an early church historian, Paul was beheaded at the order of the Roman emperor Nero. Despite the hardships he endured, the Apostle Paul declared:
“Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected, but I press on, that I my lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reach forward to those things which are ahead. I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus,” (Philippians 3:12-14).
Loren Hardin was a social worker with Southern Ohio Medical Center Hospice for 29 years. You can purchase a copy of his book, “Straight Paths: Insights For Living From Those Who Have Finished the Course”, through Amazon.
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