Delores
Louise Morris
4-17-28
to 11-4-83
"In
the Garden" was Dee's favorite hymn.
You are listening to it as done by her son.
October was Breast Cancer
Awareness month. I would like to close October with the story of a
breast cancer victim. She wasn't a survivor, though she could have
been. You won't find her in any history books or anywhere else on the
web.
Delores, known as "Dee" to her friends was born on April 17 in 1928,
To John William and Augusta Morris in Washington D.C. As a child, she
had a grandfather who lived with them that had been blinded as an
adult and could not adapt to his blindness. She helped him daily with
his meals, telling him where on his plate his food was by using his
memory of the appearance of a clock. She would tell him that his meat
was at midnight and his vegetables were perhaps at 6 o'clock, or
wherever they might be placed on his plate. Daily she took him for
walks around town.
A graduate of Anacostia High School in Washington, D.C., she met
Cecil Bostic in her Senior year there shortly after he had arrived
home from WWII. After 27 days of knowing him, they decided that they
were madly in love, married and settled in D.C. Eventually, they
moved to the Maryland suburbs, had three baby boomer children, and
the Niece of Cecil who came to live with them. There was hardly ever
a time when a grandparent or two didn't live with them for whatever
health reasons. Not a day in her life went by without a kind word, or
a random act of kindness from this woman for anyone who might be sad
or in need. At Christmas a separate room was stacked high with gifts
for anyone that came to visit, including dozens of "just in case"
gifts for those unexpected drop-ins. Her front door was always open
with a perpetual welcome sign to anyone who might be happening past.
She touched the hearts of all who knew her.
A visit in 1966 to her husband's childhood home in the poverty stricken Appalachian
Hollows of West Virginia convinced her that something had to be done to help
there. Dee and her husband (fondly known as "Cee"), returned to their church
in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, where he was Sunday school superintendent
and she a Sunday school teacher. They recruited all the assistance they could
find, and truckloads of items were taken to West Virginia to help. They also
started the necessary paperwork, at their own expense, to get government loans
and housing for the residents of PitCairn Hollow. The Washington Daily News
picked up the story and was in the process of doing a three day series on the
assistance that they were trying to give, when Cecil died suddenly. The series
was published anyway. Since women's rights hadn't taken a strong hold yet, it
was impossible for Dee to continue on with the financial assistance they had
been attempting to acquire. She did, however, continue with trucks of supplies
to the mountains for as long as she could manage.
Her children were growing and leaving home, and in a short time she remarried
and had another son in 1971. Sometime after that, she noticed that she had a small
lump in her breast but fear made her shun it off like most women of her time and
say that it was nothing and would surely go away. In 1981, she was visiting her
daughter in Florida when it was noticed that she had let things with her body
go to extreme. An entire breast had turned black, and yet she had said nothing.
Her oldest son was called while she was in the air returning home on a plane.
When she was met at the airport, she was taken immediately by her daughter-in-law
to a doctor. Dee had breast cancer and needed a mastectomy. The doctor told her
then that two and a half years was the best life expectancy that he could give
her, and that if she had come to him earlier, he could have probably seen to it
that she would be a survivor. A radical mastectomy was performed and chemotherapy
was scheduled for the period of one year. She told her children that the chemotherapy
was only preventative and that she was going to be fine. Her daughter knew better
and questioned her, to which she was told that after a year of chemotherapy the
doctor would run some more tests and see how things were going. Of course with
cancer that severe, it had already metastasized throughout her body and the Doctor's
job was simply to make her as comfortable as he possibly could when she would
finally come to that point.
Two years and two months later, Dee had to give up her job in administration
at the police department where she was working. Her family was with her round
the clock for the next month and on November 4 of 1983, all of her children
were with her when she died from this deadly killer. She had good heartedly
taunted her brother, her sense of humor staying with her til the end, telling
him that she was going to have a police escort when she died and he wasn't.
Her funeral was attended by more people than could fit into the church and the
procession to the cemetery, more than a mile long, created great traffic jams.
She did indeed, have a police escort. She had touched many other lives and most
of them had remembered her for it. She will not ever be forgotten.
I love you Momma. You
will always be my best friend.
Miss Me But Let Me
Go
When I come to the end of
the road
And the sun has set for
me,
I want no rites in a
gloom-filled room.
Why cry for a soul that is
free?
Miss me a little, but not
too long
And not with your head
bowed low,
Remember the
love
that we once
shared
Miss me-but let me
go.
For this is a
journey
that we all must
take,
And each must go
alone,
It's all a part of the
master plan
A step on the road
home.
When you are lonely and
sick of heart,
Go to the friends we
know.
And bury your
sorrows
in doing good
deeds,
Miss me-but let me
go.
-Unknown
Author's note: this
was not a pretty "happily ever after" survivor story. It was extremely difficult
to write. However, it was intended to try and give you a sense of awareness. Sometimes
it's curable - Sometimes it's not. Tell the cancer patient in your life that you
love them EVERY SINGLE DAY! You might not have tomorrow.
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