| (this series of pictures will make sense after you've read George Calvin's story)
When I was 17 years old, my best friend was Dale. We lived in Louisville, KY. Her daddy was a preacher in Brandenburg, KY, a tiny little town with mostly tobacco farms. Dale asked me to drive down to Brandenburg with her to a baseball game her church was having. While watching the game, I noticed this gorgeous boy out in the field - big, brown eyes, curly dark hair, I thought he looked like a cross between Matt Dillon and Robby Benson, only cuter! I told Dale that I would like to meet him, so after the game, she went and got George and they walked over to me. He was all sweaty and dirty from playing baseball, and he looked like the most beautiful person in the world to me.
He took of his cap with his left hand, wiped off his brow, and extended his right hand to me and said, "Hi, I'm George, you're pretty." We shook hands and I saw this glitter of kindness in his eyes, like something I had never seen or even heard about before. I knew immediately that he was special - very special. The rest is history! George and I became instant friends (with benefits!)
After the game, we went to his house and walked around and I met his family then me and George went walking out in the country. When I get nervous, I "chew" in the inside of my mouth and I was doing that, and George said, "why is your mouth all scrunched up like that? You look like a guppy! From that moment on, he called me Guppy. I'm still trying to get an EVP that says Guppy, then I will know for absolutely certain that me and my Georgie made contact.
He gave me his high school ring to wear and it was a little big for me, and I was always, always wrapping different things around it so it wouldn't fall off. I would stay at his house in Brandenburg on the weekends, with our parents persmission, and we would go to church and sing Hymns in harmony, sit under an apple tree in his backyard and talk for hours - I would lay my head on his thigh and get comfy and we would just stay out back all day and talk, we never ran out of things to talk about. Sometimes we even smoked cherry cigars when we ate too many apples! Once when we were walking down to his Grandma's house (on the same land), a wild turkey got after me. That thing chased me all around the yard and George just laughed and laughed until I yelled out to him, "George! I'm really scared!" Then he came and booted the turkey out of my way. He said, "I forgot you were a city girl." We would always cut the "love is..." cartoons out of the newspaper for each other, but we always cut out the same ones!
When we were not eating apples or pulling each other around in a wagon, we would drive to town and once when I had my "little personal female visitor", I was not feeling well. George stopped at a store and came out with a box of Midol, a Snickers bar and a one dollar gold ring. I never took that ring off for ages. George once asked if I was hungry, and I said, "a little", so he was making cheeseburgers for us, and I was just terrified about that because, at that time, I would not eat in front of a guy. But we ate our cheeseburgers and after we were done, I told him that was the first time I had ever eaten in front of a guy. He said, "well, I'm hoping we will be eating cheeseburgers together for about 100 years." George's Grandma taught me how to make some of George's favorites. Once she gave me this huge, gourd thing, green and white. She told me it's a Cushaw and said George loves Cushaw pie. And don't you know I made 2 pies out of that thing? And they were delicious! One night, his Grandma invited us down for dessert after supper and she said she had made us a green tomato pie! George and I went outside for a minute and we were both trying to figure out how we're going to eat something as nasty as a pie made out of green tomatos. We made a pact, we'll eat it, smile and say it's delicious. We went back in and when she put that pie in front of us, we got the giggles and we couldn't quit laughing, we were so nervous about that pie, and his Grandma said, "I know what you're laughing at, you think this pie won't taste good" and she laughed right along with us. Know what? It was delicious!
George was great with cars. He would buy old broken down cars and fix them up. He used to drive to Louisville on Friday nights to pick me up in the cars he had fixed. He was amazing with mechanics.
My friends from Louisville all had a talk with me, told me George and I were too serious and I had to explore other things, meet other guys and see what else is out there. They convinced me that they were right (they were oh, so wrong) and one cold, bitter night I broke up with George in one of his cars. We cried and sobbed. But he never once asked me not to do it - he wouldn't have, that was his way - very unselfish in his love for everyone he knew. So, I came back to Louisville in search of everything I already had. Some time passed, we both graduated and George moved to Tennessee and got certified to be a tractor mechanic. George was working in Louisville, not 5 minutes from me, working on tractors. But I didn't know that. I mailed him a letter, saying that I did as my friends suggested and that I only loved him, would only ever love him and I wanted to come on home.
That letter was sitting in his mailbox when he was riding home after work in his friend Jessy's little truck, they were in Corydon, Indiana. An elderly man turned in front of Jessy and George went through the windshield. He was transferred to Louisville for better care. His sister, Rita, who is still my best friend to this day, found my letter and opened it. George was in very bad shape. He had a trach in his neck and had machines breathing for him. He also had a broken ankle. He would not respond to any stimuli at all. Rita had a talk with the family and with the doctors and the preacher, and they all decided to call me and ask me to come and see if George would respond. George was in isolation. We had to completely scrub down to go into his room, we had to scrub with Bedatine and wear gown, gloves, masks, the whole thing.
A couple of us went into George's room and I took his hand in mine. I was so excited to see him again, I didn't have enough sense to be concerned about his injuries, I was just so happy to see him. I said, "Georgie! It's Connie! It's Guppy! I'm here! I love you honey, I missed you so bad!" And he squeezed my hand. He started to get better. Then the doctors told us that they would have to amputate his leg above the knee. He had a staph infection and gangrene in his leg. I knew he did, because I had noticed that his toes were black, but I guess I decided not to think about that. The next morning, I went into his room alone and he whispered to me, "my leg". I couldn't think of what to say. So I just laid my head on his chest as best I could with all those tubes everywhere, and we both cried, but quietly this time.
After about a week, George got a lot better. His nurse called me in there and told me they had made him a milkshake and put raw eggs in it because he desperately needed nutrition, she asked me to try to coax George to drink it. He was sitting up in his bed! I was so excited! We were only allowed 1-2 people in his room at a time, and only for 5-10 minutes, but for the milkshake deal, she told me I could stay in there until he finished his shake. So, she handed it to him, and he took it in both hands, and I'm going, "C'mon, sweetie, take a sip! It's good!" He, instead of taking a sip, extended it to me, he wouldn't be so rude as to take a sip before he offered me one, he wouldn't have thought of treating me bad like that. It had a bendy straw in it and I pushed it back towards him and he eventually drank a lot of it. This was the best visit we had during the 3 months he was in the hospital.
We just got to talking like we always had before, like we had never been apart for longer than a couple hours. He asked me if I cared that his leg was gone, we talked about our future and decided to get married and start our family when he got out. I told him, "I don't think it's your leg we need in order to make babies!" And we got the giggles, again, and the nurse told us not to get to silly in there. I told him how much I respect and love him, how miserable I was out there in the world, I asked him if he had found another girl while we were apart, he said, "there wasn't no sense in lookin". We both felt so happy that day at that hospital with that milkshake.
Wasn't long before the doctors told us they would have to take his other leg, too. Then they took 80% of his tummy out, and things just got progressively worse. On one Saturday morning, they told us we could go into his room without scrubbing down. I knew what it meant, but I decided to ignore that, too. He didn't say anything to me, I didn't say anything to him. It was final, that's all we both knew.
The preacher went in to pray for him, and George told the preacher, "pray for the others, not for me, I'm okay." And he passed away on that Saturday morning. His Granddaddy made me (literally pulled me down the hall) to see George after he had passed. All the tubes were gone, all the machines were off, and George didn't have that stressed look in his face anymore. There was a Peace in that room that I will never be able to explain.
I don't know why I was chosen to be George's girl. I was from Chicago, and he was in this tiny little town in Kentucky, and yet, I ended up being his girl. I have never been able to make a relationship work since Georgie, they just haven't "clicked". He was my first love, my first lesson in love - he taught me how to love my family better, everyone, he taught me how to treat people . I guess I was spoiled from the start! I am Blessed to have known George, and I wish that anyone reading this could have known him. He was an Angel, sent to Earth to teach love.
And that's exactly what he did.
Rest Well, Georgie ...
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