by Lucius Gantt
I want to thank my children, my “night nurse” Cookie, my partners, clients, neighbors and friends for taking care of me.
In the last 60 days I have had four surgical procedures but don’t worry and don’t cry. I take care of myself and I considered three of the procedures preventative and only one a “major” surgery.
In my times of health concern, I still worked and I still wrote as much as I could. To make a long story short, the Michael Jackson drug, Propofol, is a hell of a drug and oxy and Vicodin are not bad either.
Most of us want to grow as old as we can. As we mature, one day there will come a time when we will need caretakers or we will need to be caretakers for one or more loved ones.
Caretakers are Angels. Caretakers are undervalued and oftentimes very underpaid. If you or the government had to pay your caretaker to feed you, medicate you, clean your house, transport you to doctors and hospitals, change your Depends, foleys and catheters, wash your linen and change your bed, the costs would be immeasurable!
Lenora Allen is my favorite caretaker. She puts her own health concerns on the back burner to take care of her 99 year old mother, Altermese, who happens to be the number one fan of The Gantt Report.
Even at this time in her life, every week she asks her daughter “has Lucius called” or “will you read me The Gantt Report columns that Lucius sent me?”
Altermese Allen is one of my surrogate Moms. I have a few others too that realized how much I missed my mama.
So, they get me told just like Thelma Gantt Mattox did when they need to. They don’t always agree with what I write, but just like Thelma, they never told me to stop.
No one loves you like your mother, biological or surrogate. Don’t you dare say anything bad about me in the presence of my Moms. They will pimp slap you before I get to you!
Lenora and all of the other caretakers in our community deserve our admiration and respect. Caretaking is very hard work, getting up at all times of the night, cooking when you don’t want to eat a meal yourself and wiping your loved one off just like mama cleaned your poot butt ass years ago is not easy or pretty.
Thank you, Lenora, for taking care of my mama and thanks to all other caretakers.
God will bless you and I appreciate you!
Lucius is a contributing columnist to NNPA newspapers around the nation, and the author of “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing,” available on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere.