My grandmother taught me to love Coca-Cola as much as she did. When I stayed with her, she always made sure to have Cokes and Little Debbie Snack Cakes on hand. Not the greatest diet, I know, but grandmothers aren’t generally known for broccoli and salads. My grandmother believed in the power of Little Debbie Snack Cakes. She preferred the Oatmeal Creme Pies. We had a dog that took a pill every day because he was allergic to wet grass. Seriously. There were times when my grandmother kept him for us. She would give him his little tiny pill inside an entire Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie. She was his grandmother, too, I suppose, so he got the royal treatment just like I did. He certainly never kicked up a fuss about staying with her.
My grandmother had a significant hearing loss. She was deaf in one ear and had to have a hearing aid for the other one. So, she sometimes missed things that happened because she didn’t hear well. We were visiting her one weekend and my brother slipped in the bathroom and hit his head. He was bleeding and Mama and Daddy were trying to decide if he needed stitches. I was jumping up and down trying to see how much blood there was. My grandmother had missed it all. She came down the hall, saw all the commotion, and I told her that my brother fell and got hurt. And his head was bleeding! She immediately said, “David, I’ll fix you a Coke!” That was her cure-all – the antidote for anything that ails you. And she promptly brought David a glass of Coke loaded with ice. He didn’t end up with stitches, just butterfly band-aids. I guess the Coke worked.
Well, here I am again at the Cancer Center. As odd as it may seem, this a very comforting place to be. Strange, I know. But this place is actually very peaceful for me. This is where I always talk to God. Not just about cancer, but about other things, too. I always start out thanking Him for healing me and then I move on to other things. And I always end by asking Him to help me use this experience for something good – to help someone, to give someone hope, to provide some encouragement, to do whatever He wants me to do and to learn whatever He wants me to learn. I will not waste this cancer!
If my grandmother were still here, she would bring me a Coke and a Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie. She would always say, “I know what you need.” And the snacks would appear. Whatever she brought, it always made me feel better. God is like that, too. Right in the middle of cancer, He gives me just what I need to feel better. He is just kind of amazing that way.
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