My grandma's blindness and other health concerns

We had quite a discussion on Facebook awhile back about my grandma, Lena Coon’s, blindness, so let me tell all of you the story about this and other things.

My grandparents, Lena and Fred Coons, homesteaded near Belltower around 1910. My mother Mildred was born in Malvern, Iowa in January 1910 and moved to Belltower as a very young baby. Maybe Grandma had sight problems before this, but as far as I know it started in the late ‘30s or very early ‘40s when my uncle Chet Coon ran into a fence with their International pickup and a piece of wood flew up, went through the windshield and damaged her eyes. Growing from that incident, Grandma became blind in one eye and couldn’t see very well out of the other. My brother Charles says that she had glaucoma and that might be, I don’t know.

What I do know is that Grandma had a lot of trouble with her eyes. On her eyelids, especially on one side, wild hairs grew and this hurt her real bad. She had to have someone pull them out with tweezers to relieve her pain or discomfort with these hairs. She said that I did a real good job of it, so asked me to do it at every opportunity. I wasn’t even a teenager yet. Of course, I was glad to do it.

Being sight impaired didn’t slow Grandma down at all. She was a worker from early in the morning until night. Everybody marveled about what a worker she was both inside and out in the garden. She always had a huge garden. Sometimes she would be working down at one end of a row, while Grandpa and some of us kids would be down at the other end, usually plotting something. Grandma would act like she didn’t hear us for a while and eventually let us know she heard and nipped our plans in the bud. She had very good hearing.

After they sold the farm to their sons, they moved to Miles City to a small house on the outskirts down toward the river. She continued to raise a big garden, even after Grandpa died. At some point, I don’t know when, she became completely blind. She continued with her garden. One time she got lost and almost couldn’t find her way back to the house. I don’t know what saved her even though I have probably heard the story.

The thought has occurred to me that if they had access to modern day medicine none of this would have occurred. The same is true about my Dad. He died suddenly at age 59 of heart trouble. I am a carbon copy of him and have heart trouble also but here I am, 80 and still going; modern day medicine.

I have ancestors that lived in Philadelphia around 1810. They had lots of kids but only a few of them survived, mostly because of tuberculosis. Lots of people died of this and other things back then. We are lucky indeed to be here.

Now, my Grandpa Coons had Alzheimer's or at least something like that. It was heartbreaking to see him because he didn’t remember you. He would say, “Now whose kid are you?” The last time I saw him he was like that. He couldn't tell me stories, so I sat down on the couch next to him and told him the stories that he had told me. He would say, “Did I do that?” After a while, he would warm up and begin to tell me stories. That was a wonderful memory of him.

When Grandma died, my mother called us and told us, “Don’t any of you try to come, the weather is just too bad.” I appreciated that.