
I Want to Go Back to Grace Street
Loren Hardin
The Ashland Beacon
Dennis was fifty-three years old when he enrolled in hospice with esophageal cancer. Dennis lived on Grace Street in New Boston, Ohio before he moved in with his brother, Dean, when he could no longer care for himself.
Dennis and I both grew up in the small Southern Ohio town of New Boston. I’d even lived on Grace Street for a short time when I attended Stanton Elementary. It was a lot like growing up in “Mayberry” (The Andy Griffith Show). We enjoyed a sense of community, safety and security. We had our community characters and even had a policeman a lot like old Barney Fyffe. In New Boston, everyone knew everyone, maybe too well at times. I knew several of Dennis’ seven brothers and sisters, all with first names starting with “D”; but I didn’t know Dennis very well until he became our hospice patient.
Dennis had a tracheotomy and covered the hole in his throat with his finger so he could talk; and Dennis liked to talk, and I liked talking with him. While Dennis was in our inpatient center we reminisced about “the good ole days”. We even exchanged a few confessions; and Dennis especially enjoyed mine. He later told his sister, Donna, with some delight, ‘I can’t believe that out of him.’
But Dennis had some interesting confessions of his own. He confessed that he had been an alcoholic. He admitted, “I went to the bars looking for women, but I usually came home with two black eyes.” Dennis wasn’t a big fellow, but he was game. His brother, Dean, told me, “I had to rescue him from many a fight…He would take on three guys at a time.” Dennis had even been barred from the MT Corral, one of New Boston’s favorite watering holes.
There was something likeable about Dennis, besides him being a fellow New Bostonian. There was a grace about Dennis; he didn’t appear proud or judgmental; which I’ve found is usually the fruit of brokenness, of humility. Donna declared, “He would do anything for anybody.”
You know, it’s easy to form a jaded prejudiced opinion of people with drug or alcohol addictions. I shared a lesson with Dennis and Donna that I learned from my daughter Jessie when she was attending college. After one of Jessie’s close friends died from an overdose she told me, “Dad someone needs to tell people that just because someone has a drug problem it doesn’t mean that they’re a worthless person!” She described her friend as one of the most caring, tender-hearted, and understanding people she’d ever known. Her respect, appreciation and grief were all profound.
A few weeks before Dennis’ death he wanted his sister, Donna, to take him back to his house on Grace Street “Just for a few hours”. Donna recounted, “I was really worried that something would happen. There are three steps and then two steps to get in the house. When we got in, he sat down in his chair for a few minutes and went through some papers. Then he said, ‘Alright, I’m ready to go.’” Donna reflected, “I’m so glad I took him.”
In route to visit a patient in West Portsmouth several years ago, I came across “Easy Street”; really, it exists! And on Interstate 68, east of Morgantown, W.Va., I saw an exit to “Fair Chance Road” on “Cheat Lake”. I guess if you lived on Cheat Lake you would hope for a Fair Chance. You know a lot of people want to live on “Easy Street” but, like Dennis, I frequently find myself longing to go back to “Grace Street”.
I’ve experienced God’s saving grace, but I sometimes fall from His sustaining grace; because I start thinking, “I can do it on my own. I don’t need any help”. But sooner or later, I find myself back on the knees of my heart praying, “God help me”. And again, I find myself longing to be back to “Grace Street”.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. (Ephesians 2:8-10).
Loren Hardin worked for twenty-nine years at Southern Ohio Medical Center Hospice. You can order his book, “Straight Paths: Insights for living from those who have finished the course”, from Amazon.
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