Sherriff Meadows

Like so many others, I was saddened to learn that we had lost Sheriff Meadows. I got the call about his passing early that Friday morning while out of town. Even though I was on vacation, I had a hard time keeping my mind on the fun because my thoughts kept wandering back to my memories of the Sheriff.

When I first started working with him, I appreciated his manner. He would tell me what I needed to know. If there was something that would help me but didn’t need to be published, he was honest about that. He had a sense of humor that kept me on my toes but still made his point.

At one time, he was working on an investigation that I had questions about. It was extremely sensitive because it involved someone who was well-known. Leroy told me he would give me my information when he was ready for me to have it, and in the meantime he didn’t want anything about the investigation leaking out. I told him it was safe with me.

Wanting to drive the point home, he told me what he would do if the information got out before he was ready. He would send two of his biggest, meanest deputies to my house to draw and quarter me and then feed me to the catfish in the river.

"Have you ever seen how ugly those river cat are, little girl?" he asked me.
I laughed at him, assuring him that I had indeed seen them, and that I didn’t want to be fish bait. When the time came, he called me at home late one evening, telling me an arrest was being made at that moment, and to go write my story. I had kept my word, and he kept his.

Images and pictures and phrases and things he said to me over the years kept crowding through my head throughout the last weeks. He called me "little girl" so often that at times I wondered if he knew my name, but he never forgot Logan’s name.

He never liked me taking his picture, but tolerated it because I told him it was part of my job and part of his job. He seemed to have an expression of "can we get this done already" on his face in every picture I took of him.

If he could find a way to get out of me taking a picture of him, he would do it every single time. Which is why quite a few pictures I took in news stories about the sheriff’s department had some shocked looking deputies in them. They had just gotten recruited to stand up and take a picture they weren’t expecting to take. Off to side, Sheriff Meadows is smiling, because he just got out of taking picture he didn’t want to take.

Another thing I remember is how calm he was. We were talking on the phone one afternoon during stormy weather. He asked where Logan was. When I told him he was still at pre-school, Leroy told me to go pick him up. He told me his boys (the deputies of the department) had spotted a tornado in one area near Blytheville, with rotation in the clouds in another area. He had to get off the phone with me so he could go sound the sirens.

That memory sticks in my head because I left work, went and got Logan, and made it back to the drive-way of my home before the sirens sounded. It was probably 15 minutes from the time Leroy told me a tornado had been spotted until I heard the warning sirens.
Now, each time I hear the sirens I remember our conversation and wonder exactly how long ago rotation was actually spotted.

But I also remember that Leroy knew, even during our conversation about work related matters, that I would be concerned for my son. Yes, he needed to get his job done. However, he didn’t just hang up on me. He told me to go get my child, and get him to safety.

He took care of us first, before going on about his business. Which I guess is probably the thing I remember the most about the Sheriff. He just naturally took care of people as he went about his business.

Fighting the Fog

Yes, it’s me. I’m here. I haven’t disappeared, fallen off of a cliff, ridden off into the sunset or met with some other mysterious demise. Since it has been almost a month since I have written a column, I can understand how one would think such a thing.

The past few months have been hard ones for me physically. Writing shouldn’t be something that is hard to do, and usually it isn’t. But since my physical problems include my brain, sometimes just thinking hurts.

Since my editor prefers for me to think while I am writing, it was better for all of us if I skipped a few columns rather than writing in the condition I have been in. Trust us on this.

We just got back from another trip to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. That insures a few things. First, that I will be in what my husband calls the "Mayo Fog" a little longer. The Fog is a term we use to describe the week or so after my trips to the clinic. It is a long trip up and back, 12 hours one way. Mayo can do more to you in one day than most hospitals can do to someone in one week. Then we drive the 12 hours home.

My body reacts to all of that by essentially shutting down. We are so hyped up while we are there, doing everything we can as quickly as we can. For one thing, we want to be home. For another thing, even though insurance pays a portion of the actual treatment at the Clinic, nothing pays for the food, gas, and hotel bills while we are there. The faster we get it done, the cheaper it is. But mainly, I just like being home as opposed to being somewhere that the answer to every single question begins by getting poked with a needle.

We get home, and all that adrenaline fades. Completely. Totally. Into nothingness. I shut down, literally sleeping for up to 20 hours in every 24 hour period. I can do that for days, and we have discovered it is best to let me do that. If I don’t do it, I don’t recover as fast.

Eventually, the fog lifts and life gets back to what our normal is. Which isn’t normal at all, but works for us. That brings us to the second thing. I will get better. I won’t apparently get well, but I will get better than I have been doing the last few months. The doctors at Mayo did a little magic, a little switching and swapping. I am sort of a work in progress. So we have a few new options we are trying, and hopefully they will help.

The third thing may be another procedure at Mayo in June that I dread, hate, loath and detest. It hurts. Well, practically everything they do hurts, but this one is pretty much beyond my tolerance level. I don’t like it, I don’t want it, and asked my doctor not to do it this time. If the magic we are trying for the next eight weeks doesn’t work, I won’t have a choice. If it does, I will. Time will tell, and I am holding onto hope for the magic.

I already feel better. The fog is slowly lifting, and this past week has been better than the past few months have been. I guess that means you are going to have to get used to seeing me around here again.

That’s good, because I like being here.