Today’s word of the day, thanks to Words Coach (https://www.wordscoach.com/dictionary) is succor. Succor, which is also sometimes spelled succour, is officially pronounced / ˈsʌk ər /, with the vowel in the second syllable reduced to schwa as is the rule in English pronunciation (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/succor). But I have to say that I often hear people pronounce it more like / ˈsʌk ˌɔr /, with a secondary emphasis on the second syllable. I would guess that people say it that way so that it is not confused with sucker, which is a homophone for succor but which, especially in American slang, means something quite different.

So what does succor mean? It’s a noun that means “help; relief; aid; assistance” or “a person or thing that gives help, relief, aid” (ibid.). It can also be a verb meaning “to help or relieve” (ibid.). Etymonline.com says that the word appears in the English language “c. 1200, socour, earlier socours ‘aid, help,’ from Anglo-French succors ‘help, aid,’ Old French socors, sucurres ‘aid, help, assistance’ (Modern French secours), from Medieval Latin succursus ‘help, assistance,’ from past participle of Latin succurrere ‘run to help, hasten to the aid of.’ This is from assimilated form of sub ‘up to’ (see sub-) + currere ‘to run’ (from PIE root *kers- ‘to run’). The final -s was mistaken in English as a plural inflection and dropped late 13c. The meaning ‘one who aids or helps’ is from c. 1300. Stanyhurst’s ‘Aeneid’ has succoress ‘a female helper.’ The story that speakeasy queen ‘Texas’ Guinan once greeted her lawyer with ‘Hello, succor’ is, hélas, unconfirmed” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=succor). The Greek word hélas means “unfortunately,” and I’m guessing that if Texas Guinan did say such a thing to her lawyer, the spelling would have been sucker.

Richard Stanyhurst (1547-1618) was “an Anglo-Irish alchemist, translator, poet and historian”; he “translated into English The First Foure Bookes of Virgil his Aeneis (Leiden, 1582), to give practical proof of the feasibility of Gabriel Harvey’s theory that classical rules of prosody could be successfully applied to English poetry. The translation is considered by the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica an unconscious burlesque of the original in a jargon arranged in what the writer called hexameters” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stanyhurst). It begins,

Now manhood and garbroyls I chaunt, and martial horror.

I blaze thee captayne first from Troy cittye repairing,

Lyke wandring pilgrim too famosed Italie trudging,

And coast of Lauyn: soust wyth tempestuus hurlwynd

On land and sailing, bi Gods predestinat order. (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137401496_7)

If you’ve ever read The Aeneid, whether in Latin or in translation, you might find some humor in that.

Today is a personal posting, so if you don’t like personal postings, you might want to stop here.

In January, my mother-in-law, 97 years old, went to the hospital with abdominal pain. After several tests and a couple of CT scans, the doctors told us that she had colon cancer in her secum. We consulted the person who had medical power of attorney, who is a doctor, and he agreed with the conclusion that there was no point doing any further medical testing as even a colonoscopy would likely kill her, and that any treatment of the cancer—surgery, chemotherapy, radiation—would also likely kill her. So we were allowed to bring her home in what is called home hospice.

Home hospice requires that someone be in the house with her pretty much 24/7. So my wife and I moved in with her, and we’ve been here the last 5½ months. The medical organization that helped us with her care here in Western North Carolina is called Care Partners, and they were indeed partners with us. In addition to having a nurse visit us regularly to take vital signs and otherwise check on my mother-in-law, they sent a hygienist to give her bed baths. They also sent, several times, a social worker and a chaplain. Interestingly, the latter two were not really there for my mother-in-law but primarily for my wife, who had primary responsibility for caring for her mother.

My mother-in-law died this morning. She was in her bed, in her bedroom, in her home. She was relaxed (the nurse told us what to look for to determine whether she was relaxed or in distress). We believe she was as comfortable as could be.

Yesterday, when my wife went to give her some medication to help her stay relaxed and calm, she woke up briefly and said, “I’m ready to go.” We have no idea what she meant. Perhaps she awoke from a dream in which she was getting ready to go somewhere. Perhaps she thought we were getting her up to go somewhere. Or perhaps she was telling her husband, who died about 2½ years ago. He died in a hospice setting, and the last thing he said to the doctor who was caring for him was, “I’m ready to go, and you’re making it hard for me ‘cause you’re taking such good care of me.”

There have been various kinds of succor for us over these last 5½ months. We were blessed that we were able to retire a couple of years ago—we couldn’t have done this had we been working. We were blessed by our own children who came to visit us at times with our grandchildren, and who took care of our home while we have been absent. We were blessed by the thoughts and prayers of friends, old and new. But there was a special succor provided by the professionals at Care Partners. They had been total strangers to us before January. They treated us like family, or like family in a good way.

And there’s one more person to thank: “For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted” (Hebrews 2:18).

Today’s image is the logo of the Care Partners organization (https://m.bbb.org/prod/ProfileImages/e6f20bdb-5992-4eac-9e94-b427edbe8c41.jpeg), taken from the website of the Better Business Bureau.