Seven years ago I was at a Dunkin' Donuts on Thanksgiving day. I wasn't working as a cop, and I wasn't homeless, friendless, or trapped far from home by a snowstorm. What I was was the son in law of a woman who not being a coffee drinker herself did not own a coffee maker and could only offer caffeine-addicted visitors instant. That Christmas the blonde and I gave her a Mr Coffee. This has kept me out of Dunkin' Donuts when we come to visit, but in the meantime a Starbucks and an excellent independent bagel emporium have opened in town so I have continued my own tradition of escaping the house on Thanksgiving morning for a decent cup of coffee. Just because you give someone a Mr Coffee doesn't mean you can rely on them to keep a can of Maxwell House around the house.
So, that Thanksgiving morning I was sharing the counter at the King of Prussia, Pa. Dunkin' Donuts with two couples in their sixties who were out for breakfast together. Their conversation was about vacations but turned to questions of health.
First wife: I always say, if you can't go first class, I'm not going at all.
First husband: That's what I tell her, only I don't say first class. I say, if you're going to do it, do it right.
First wife: It's better, you can't afford two weeks, you take one. Take a nice vacation every other year instead of every year, rather than skimp and skimp and skimp.
All four agree that the best way to see the country is to drive all day and spend the night in a motel. This is first class. The alternative is a Winnebago or camping out. None of them wants to go to Europe. There's still too much to see here. Besides, says the first husband, Americans are hated everywhere they go.
First husband: The French hate us. The English hate us. They don't want us there. They want our money. They don't want us. The Germans! The Germans hate us!
While the counter girl was delivering my coffee and donut the topic of conversation changed. The first husband is telling the second couple how his sister has "The Alzheimer's." His mother-in-law has her mind. "But her body's gone." The second wife's mother has Alzheimer's too.
Second wife: It's terrible to see, watch their personality change, and then they're not there at all.
A nurse once told the second husband some things about pancreatic cancer.
Second husband: One. Don't let them tell you, you don't want to know. What's the good anyway? And two, don't let them cut you. It won't help. You should just go home, and in three months you'll be in the ground.
The first husband and wife each lost their fathers within two days of each other. His father fell off a roof. The second husband' s father died at 98.
Second husband: And it was because he wanted to. He stopped eating. He said, "My time's up. I don't want to be here anymore."
Second wife: I think that once the quality of life goes, that's it.
Her father was sick for a long time before he died. He'd had trouble swallowing. The doctors did a battery of tests on his throat, esophagus. Bloodwork. They found nothing wrong. Sent him home. The man's weight dropped to 123 lbs. The doctors told them the weight loss didn't mean anything. The second wife was furious.
Second wife: The man looks like this, and you're telling me he's not sick?
She was frantic. Her doctor pushed to have her father admitted into the hospital. Hospital wouldn't take him because the insurance wouldn't pay for it. Finally, her father collapsed. In he went, into Intensive Care. Two days before he died an MRI was done on his whole body.
Second wife: Cancer. He had cancer. Riddled with it. Cancer all over him.
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