Abe

Abe Nash.

No story in my life can be complete without explaining what an impact this man had on me.

May 1963 an eight year old Abe is outside cleaning weeds out of a rose bush flower bed. He had borrowed his daddy’s knife to cut weeds out. He was told to be careful and not cut him self with it. A relative was cutting grass with a big snapper lawn mower. The big one, a turtle head on the front like a bulldog on a Mack truck. Must have weighed 75 to 100 pounds. The relative, an Uncle Matt was operating the mower, and wanting to do a good job, was mowing where no mowing had been done before. What was hidden beneath the tall grass was a cement block half buried in the ground. As he ran the mower over the block a chunk of it broke off and went straight to Abe’s forehead. Just like that, a split second really, and his life is gone and a new one put in its place. Brain damage. Severe brain damage. The doctors said he would never have more than the brain capacity of a 5 year old. Although ‘they’ say that’s all the capacity he has, I know better. I see the look in his eyes and I know he understands. He had to learn everything from eating, talking, turning his head from side to side. And the fact that even until this day he can feed himself and that it is considered a blessing is something I cannot phantom. A hard life was in store for this little boy.

I was born 6 months later in November so I never knew him any other way. One of my earliest memories is while my mother and Lucy Stancil a friend of the family and a neighbor would bend Abe’s legs and arms so that his mind could remember how they worked. My job was to turn his head from side to side for the same reason. Once his brain found its comfort zone and had learned everything it was going to, his right arm and left leg settled on what they were going to do…..nothing. Also, whatever controls his vocal cord had and has a mind of its own. And that was just for his motor controls.

His memory is another story altogether. Most of them are of Mother Goose rhymes, songs and sayings that have been in my family for as long as I can remember. Early on, someone could stand behind and cover his eyes with their hands and someone else could ask him ‘who is that?’ He NEVER failed to correctly guess who the hands belonged to. That is until later on in his life and now he will not even try to guess. You see Mr. Journal, those with severe brain injuries will digress as they age so that its 1 step forward and 2 steps back. Hard life indeed.


The newest medical doctrine in the ‘60’s was that a patient with a severe brain injury wasn’t to hear music. They thought the radio waves would further damage the brain. So, no TV could be on in the house. What that did for me? I saw a video some time back where a little girl could look at the pictures of all the Presidents and name them by sight. I am not bragging but I could do that. At 2 years old. Well, that medical doctrine line of thinking did not change until I was around 5 years old.
That is when I discovered that Oscar winning rabbit Bugs Bunny. From that moment on Abe and I would spend our afternoons and Saturdays watching anything from Looney Tunes to Gilligan Island (I still have a little crush on Mary Ann and I think Abe does too. He’s not that brain damaged) to Gunsmoke and so forth and so on. From then on the memories of dead Presidents names faded with each episode I watched.

Life pretty much stayed that way until I was in my 11th year and I got a dose of life to come………

To be continued.