My elderly buddy...quite a character

I have received a request to talk more about my elderly home care client mentioned in the 20 Years Ago posting.  His name was Mr. Morrison.  I began working for him when he was 78 and left his employ when he was about to turn 90.  He was a hard man, a farmer and carpenter and home saw mill operator out in the pre-foothills of Alberta. His word was law it would seem in the running of his business and family.  He and his wife had adopted several children over the years.  Back in those days, the 1940's, people who had more children than they could afford to raise would drop the kids off in farm yards and fields in this area and hope that some kindly farmer couple would take them in.  For all his hardness, Mr. Morrison had a soft spot for these abandoned children and he and his wife seemed glad to have them as they had no children of their own.  He talked often about those days, about the toughness of the men and the practicality of their "womenfolk".  His wife died of horrible cancer in her middle age and he never got over it.  Several years after I began to work for him I discovered that the big bag in the coat closet that went clank every time I hung up my coat was actually the urn with his wife's ashes that he could not bring himself to bury.  The daughter who was closest to him died in a horrific car accident during my time of employment and the pain for him was intense.  He never got over it.  In a way I never have either because the day of the accident I was supposed to have been with her, but a last minute sinus infection caused me to cancel my participation in our outing.  I still shake when I remember that day.  Mr. Morrison  loved lots of drama and we employees provided all that he needed.  There was myself and another older lady, a variety of Philippinas and a retired Hungarian school teacher, as well as a rather crude fellow who sometimes forgot to remove his pornography from the living room before the rest of us arrived for work.  Mr. Morrison was a gentleman who would have been horrified by that sort of thing.  Mr. M. had severe Parkinsons but he rarely let it stop him from doing what he really wanted to do:  helping me sort out the long electric cord for the lawnmower, getting him into the handibus when he got lonely and decided to go hang out the hospital, and driving his car out to his old farm where he delighted in having me drive through his son's newly planted fields just because it aroused such a response.  I can't remember now many times we were in soil up to the mid tire height and I lived in fear of getting stuck out there.  Mr. M. loved a good practical joke, especially if it was played on his worst enemies.  He swore he was not a church goer but in his sleep at night he would sing hymns, all the verses, in a still beautiful tenor voice. His vision was bad, his friends nearly all passed away, his family didn't always please him, and the Parkinsons and other health issues made his every waking moment difficult, but his sense of humour never flagged. He loved to fall down in the kitchen after supper if he was alone, in the times before he needed full time assistance.  It meant he could press his health line button and have firemen and ambulance drivers racing to his door and chopping it open with an axe in order to reach him.  haha  One day he fell backwards into his own bathtub and couldn't reach the health line button.  We had to call my husband to come and get him out of the tub, but Mr. M. was not injured and was killing himself laughing about all the trouble he was causing.  He was good to all his staff, appreciated everything we did for him in his gruff way.  He died in hospital a few months after I stopped working for him. I miss Mr. Morrison.