Sine Die 79

Allow me to share some birthday memories with you. I was born on September 17^th, 1930. On this day, sine die 79, I look back on a long and exciting life.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. (Psalm 90:12)

The world has totally changed in my lifetime; but there are some things that never change. Don't you pity those who have no memories? Thank God I remember the first day of summer, when my mother told me I could go barefoot and I could feel the “good earth” on my feet and in between my toes. I remember the two times that I asked the funeral director to put my hand on the dead hands of my parents in their caskets so I could remember what those hands had done for me. Some years after I had sold my practice in Goldsboro, I returned to the office to check on something (I had sold my practice to another doctor and was living at my beach home).

My driver let me out of the car in the parking lot and as I was walking across the parking lot, a very elderly patient of mine spotted me coming across the lot towards the office. She got up out of the reception room and met me in the parking lot. She said, “Dr. Morris, I want you to take care of me today.” Later, I called one of my professors at Chapel Hill; and I said to him, “Today I got paid for all the hard work and studying I did in school over all those years. Today I got paid for what I gave my country in the military.” When this black woman took my hand, I could feel the confidence she had in me that she had shown over and over as a patient. She knew she would get good care from those in the office still there. But, the touch coming from the translation of another human being is beyond all explanation.

My wonderful mother never forgot my taste for blackberries. I have traveled through every continent of the globe and have eaten in many of the world's great cafes. I have never found a food as delicious as blackberry jam. Always, without exception, my mother knew her children's favorite food. When we came home from college or for any other reason, it was always on the table. She always cut the corn off the cob and cooked it like that. Nothing on a hard working day was as good as fresh corn on a freshly made biscuit, along with freshly sliced tomatoes in apple cider vinegar. I thought I knew Chinese food until I went to China. Authentic Chinese food has a taste and tang which you will never forget.

Thank God I had sight as a young person. Some of my friends, blind from birth, have often asked me about things which they can only imagine. Their families never took the time to let them feel or describe things to them. One blind friend came to my house (He had never seen since his eyes were destroyed in an incubator at Duke University Hospital) and in my den, I was describing the various animal skins I have on the walls. His father, a college professor, jumped up and took him over to the skins for him to feel of them. Then, I understood why this young man, blind from birth was able to graduate with advanced degrees from two universities. He had such outstanding parents. I am thankful I saw our mother cat moving her kittens in her mouth from one location to another. I am thankful I saw my own mother take a setting hen off the nest with her young chicks. Children reared on a farm have an understanding of life and how precious it is. I am so thankful that God gave me the privilege of seeing the Parthenon, the Taj Mahal, the Glaciers of the North and South Pole, before I was totally blind.

My whole world now involves hearing, I have radios all over my house. But, the greatest music I hear is that of my grandson singing in the church where his father is pastor, and hearing my only son (who has earned two doctorates) preach. I'm thankful that as a child, I could hear the train whistles at the nearby town and realize that there were places to travel in this world and that I could see the pyramids on the Nile or the Pyramids in South America, if I studied and kept myself alert to the world. I have never traveled anywhere in the world that was not exactly what I expected because I had read that much about the world and it's geography. I went to the Radio City Music Hall when it was still great. I attended plays where such actors as Richard Burton, Yule Brenner, Mickey Rooney, and Claudette Colbert starred.

I'm thankful that God gave me the ambition and knowledge to work hard, study hard and then be able to contribute to the lives of people in hospitals that have a very distinct smell. I am thankful that I knew young girls who wore perfume and had femininity when I was young, not like today's liberated woman, who smells of cigarettes and wants to act like a man. I'm thankful that I experienced the smell of ham cooking in an iron frying pan on my mother's “Home Comfort” wood stove, when coming in from hard work on a cold day. I will never forget the smell of the Great Bizarre in Istanbul, Turkey where fragrance coming from over-spiced cooking blended with the Turkish tobacco from the pipes of friendly hawkers and tinklers selling their wares.

My passion for the security and safety of fellow human beings regardless of age, in the womb or in the nursing home, comes from the fact that life is a gift from God. The unbelievers will always point out the warts of believers. But they never recognize the hypocrisy of their fellow unbelievers. We do what we do, because we believe what we believe. On this 79^th birthday of my existence, I'm thankful for the instillation of my belief which has led me to do what I have done, thankful for my forgiveness from God and my fellow man, and at this time, just seek to be more forgiving and more thankful for the everlasting arms that have carried me this far.

Victory in Jesus (Chorus)

O victory in Jesus,
My Savior, forever.
He sought me and bought me
With His redeeming blood;
He loved me ere I knew Him
And all my love is due Him,
He plunged me to victory,
Beneath the cleansing flood.