Hazel Mitchell died last summer while I was out of town. She had a massive heart attack as she sat in her recliner watching an afternoon Braves game on TV. The last words she heard, after eighty years of life, were probably “High and inside to left-handed batter Fred McGriff. Need a cool, refreshing break? Tap the Rockies: Coors Light.”
Hazel was one of the shut-ins to whom I deliver lunches every Tuesday for Friendly Neighbors. If, last summer, I’d been asked to rate the health of my clients on a scale from one to ten — one being horizontal and ten being ambulatory — Hazel would have topped the list, with an eight. She lived in a tidy, well-maintained duplex just north of the new Mormon church and west of a mammoth grocery store with one of the largest parking lots in northern Idaho. Hazel’s three rooms were always immaculate and adorned with photographs of her family, including Mr. Mitchell, who, like so many husbands, did not accompany his wife into her eighth decade. A brown-plaid afghan lay draped across the middle of her staid, colonial-style couch — old but not antique. On her kitchen island was a heaping glass bowl of Hershey’s Miniatures. I was always tempted to pocket a few, but never did.
