For how long this immobility? I may have read from a report that the radium stayed in for 52 hours. There is no one around today to confirm this. It must have seemed an eternity for Dad Walter and Mom Ethel – watching, caring, waiting, worrying. (Not for me – time stood still, for I was under sedation.)

There was a radiation rest. Unsedated, I cried for my baby who was not allowed into the hospital.

Dad and Mom, parents of my husband then in their late 40s, brought my son to the hospital park under my window. I frantically waved, but I couldn’t keep the baby’s attention. He went back to his playing and his grandparents.

What joy for me when Mom and Dad brought my baby so I could look out of the window to watch him several floors down. That was the closest Dad and Mom could get him to me during my confinement.

Soon, I would again be prepared for another cone radiation implantation and immobility for another 52 hours.

During breaks, I was made to stand and walk but I couldn’t, for extreme pain. I was bent crooked. Radiation irritated the spinal cord. Lying down was less painful. Another effect was that I’d lost my appetite. The idea of food was repulsive.

Before I was put back on radiation, I felt hungry. Dad Walter was in the room. Mom Ethel may have been waiting in the park with the baby. I told Dad that I wanted to eat, which he was pleased to hear seeing that I hadn’t had any nourishment.

"What would you like to eat," Dad asked, "I’ll go out and get anything you want." I was, as usual, thinking, longing for my little son. I was thinking of his favorite television jingle targeted to children: "O, O, Spaghetti-Os…the neat spaghetti you can eat with a spoon, O, O, Spaghetti-Os." Influenced by TV, my son hummed this jingle on canned circles of pasta in pathetic-looking tomato sauce which I wouldn’t buy for him.

But bedridden that day at the hospital with life-threatening illness, and intensely longing for my son, I told Dad Walter that I wanted some canned Spaghetti-Os. Dad was unbelieving, amused, but right away went out to the nearest supermarket to buy, probably for the first time in his life, canned Spaghetti-Os.

Awakened by the sound of running water, I watched Dad Walter turn and soak, shake and soak a can of Spaghetti-O in the very hot water in the sink. He thought I was asleep so he continued heating the can. I watched him for a long time. He burnt his fingers a few times. He continued soaking the unopened can. He couldn’t bear to give me cold Spaghetti-Os. He was desperately trying to warm my meal.

When he spooned some out of the can into my mouth, it was wonderfully hot. I may have eaten that entire can. As Dad spoon-fed me, I was singing, maybe loudly, maybe in my mind, my son’s favorite jingle, "The neat spaghetti you can eat with a spoon, O, O, Spaghetti-Os…." That was 1967.

Dad Walter, 91, died this weekend of pneumonia in a hospital in Washington D.C. At the other side of the world from him, I cried all day as I did housework. I cried as I pushed the cart grocery shopping later in the day. I was crying while I played billiards with friends that night. I’m still crying as I write this.

Dad, I don’t think I ever thanked you for that wonderful hot meal of O,O,Spaghetti-Os.

Thank you, too, for the innumerable kindnesses you and Mom Ethel had shown me. You both have been one of the best that happened in my life. I have always loved you both, and always will.