A nurse took the tired, anxious serviceman to the bedside. "Your son is here," she said to the old man. She had to repeat the words several times before the patient's eyes opened.Heavily sedated because of the pain of his heart attack, he... dimly saw the young uniformed Marine standing outside the oxygen tent. He reached out his hand. The Marine wrapped his toughened fingers around the old man's limp ones, squeezing a message of love and encouragement.The nurse brought a chair so that the Marine could sit beside the bed. All through the night the young Marine sat there in the poorly lighted ward, holding the old man's hand and offering him words of love and strength. Occasionally, the nurse suggested that the Marine move away and rest awhile. He refused.Whenever the nurse came into the ward, the Marine was oblivious of her and of the night noises of the hospital - the clanking of the oxygen tank, the laughter of the night staff members exchanging greetings, the cries and moans of the other patients. Now and then she heard him say a few gentle words. The dying man said nothing, only held tightly to his son all through the night. Along towards dawn, the old man died. The Marine released the now lifeless hand he had been holding and went to tell the nurse. While she did what she had to do, he waited.
Finally, she returned. She started to offer words of sympathy, but the Marine interrupted her, "Who was that man?" he asked.The nurse was startled, "He was your father," she answered."No, he wasn't," the Marine replied. "I never saw him before in my life.""Then why didn't you say something when I took you to him?"
"I knew right away there had been a mistake, but I also knew he needed his son, and his son just wasn't here. When I realized that he was too sick to tell whether or not I was his son, knowing how much he needed me, I stayed. I came here tonight to find a Mr. William Grey. His Son was killed in Iraq today, and I was sent to inform him. What was this Gentleman's Name? " The nurse with tears in her eyes answered, "Mr. William Grey..."
The next time someone needs you . just be there.
THREE YEAR OLD BOY IS SITTING ON THE TOILET. HIS MOTHER THINKS HE HAS BEEN IN THERE TOO LONG, SO SHE GOES IN TO SEE WHAT'S UP. THE LITTLE BOY IS SITTING ON THE TOILET READING A BOOK. BUT ABOUT EVERY 15 SECONDS OR SO, HE PUTS THE BOOK DOWN, GRIPS ONTO THE TOILET SEAT WITH HIS LEFT HAND AND HITS HIMSELF ON TOP OF HIS HEAD WITH HIS RIGHT HAND.HIS MOTHER
SAYS: "BILLY, ARE YOU ALL RIGHT? YOU'VE BEEN IN HERE FOR A WHILE." BILLY SAYS: "I'M FINE, MOMMY. I JUST HAVEN'T GONE POTTY' YET." MOTHER SAYS: "OK, YOU CAN STAY HERE A FEW MORE MINUTES, BUT, BILLY, WHY ARE YOU HITTING YOURSELF ON THE HEAD?" BILLY SAYS: "WORKS FOR KETCHUP."
A Daughter's Last Gift Turns Her Struggling Family Into New Millionaires
By Bryan Llenas Published May 17, 2013 Fox News Latino
Savannah Cerezo, 14, who died in August 2012. The glass cookie jar Savannah bought for her mother and where the $4.8 million lotto ticket was found.
The Cerezo family hasn't been facing the best of times.Their house has been in foreclosure since February and they were months away from eviction.Their cars were repossessed.Their jewelry gone, sold to the highest bidder.Ricardo Cerezo, the 44-year-old head of household, quit his job in management consulting in 2010 to take care of his daughter, Savannah, who had to stay home with severe bipolar disorder. A professional in helping companies in distress, he painstakingly took her to and from medical appointments and trips to the hospital. But 14-year-old Savannah died last August. Brain-dead, her parents pulled her off life support after suffering four-and-a-half hours of seizures.
One of Savannah's last gifts to her parents was a glass cookie jar. And one of her last requests, seeing their financial struggles, was urging them to never stop playing the lottery. "Savannah was the only one that encouraged us to play," he told Fox News Latino. "Everyone at home thought it was a waste of time given that we needed every penny."The father played when he could and saved old lottery tickets - they never won anything - in that glass cookie jar. This week, nine months after Savannah's death, Ricardo and his wife, Bonnie, were doing some kitchen cleaning and she asked him to finally do something about three months' worth of old tickets filling up the jar.Do something with them, she asked him. So instead of throwing them out, he decided to actually check if one of the tickets had winning numbers.Did it ever.Ricardo took the 11 tickets stashed in the cookie jar to the 7-Eleven where he had bought them. The first eight out of the nine tickets came up empty. The next ticket was a winner - $3. But the last ticket, a Quick Pix, alerted Cerezo that he needed to file a claim, which means the ticket was worth $600 or more.As it turns out, it was worth nearly $5 million. It'll be spread out in annual payments of $100,000 for 26 years and paid on each February, coincidentally Savannah's birthday month.Ricardo Cerezo had no doubt - it was all Savannah's divine doing."She kept insisting that somehow she was going to pay us back," he said. "She kept her promise."The turn of events has dramatically impacted the Cerezos.Now they'll be able to keep their home - they hadn't touched Savannah's room, except for adding an urn with her ashes.
It was in that very room where Ricardo cried for losing his daughter and where he prayed that life would get better for his family."Dear lord, please just don't take away this room," he said he prayed. "We had lost everything we had. The room was the last thing we had of her existence."Little did we know the answer was downstairs the whole time," Ricardo said, in a nondescript glass cookie jar filled with old papers.Beyond being able to pay the house off and return to a normal life at home, now the Cerezos won't have to worry about how to afford to pay for college for their two other children.They also pledged to contribute to their church - where they sought consolation while grieving Savannah's death -and other charities. They will also look to fund organizations, or start an organization of their own, that will conduct research into mental health, given their daughter's deadly bout with bipolar disorder."Every now, and then we can find the joy in the win itself," Ricardo said. "We are very happy that we have some financial peace. But there is no real jumping for joy." But even with the unexpected economic turnaround at home, Ricardo Cerezo noted he's not about to forget what making it through hard work is all about.Come Monday, he'll report to work just like any other day.
The taxpayer - that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination. When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?' I work until beer o'clock.When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt. Nothing is work unless you'd rather be doing something else. Going to work for a large company is like getting on a train. Are you going sixty miles an hour or is the train going sixty miles an hour and you're just sitting still? It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work. Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all. I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.There is a vast world of work out there in this country, where at least 111 million people are employed in this country alone - many of whom are bored out of their minds. All day long.When people go to work, they shouldn't have to leave their hearts at home. Nothing will work unless you do. Anyone who can walk to the welfare office can walk to work. To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth. As I understand it, sport is hard work for which you do not get paid. Every noble work is at first impossible. Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits. When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results. Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doin. Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work. There are one hundred men seeking security to one able man who is willing to risk his fortune. We work to become, not to acquire. The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence. Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. Nobody can be successful unless he loves his work. Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.Ya gots to work with what you gots to work with. The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there. The man who wins is the average man, Not built on any particular plan; Not blessed with any particular luck ??“ Just steady and earnest and full of pluck. The man who wins is the man who works, Who neither labor nor trouble shirks; Who uses his hands,When your work speaks for itself, don???t interrupt. Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits.
Let every man be occupied, and occupied in the highest employment of which his nature is capable, and die with the consciousness that he has done his best. When I feel bad, I work. When I have problems, when I'm depressed, when I'm bored with life, I sit down to my work. There are probably other prescriptions, but I don't know them. Or they don't work for me. You want my advice -- here it is Go and work. Thank God that people like you and me need only paper and pencil to work. Individual commitment to a group effort, that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work. Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it. If you don't want to work, you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work. No man is born into the world whose work Is not born with him. There is always work, And tools to work with for those who will; And blessed are the horny hands of toil. I find that a man is as old as his work. If his work keeps him from moving forward, he will look forward with the work. If we work upon marble, it will perish if we work upon brass, time will efface it if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust but if we work upon immortal minds and instill into them just principles, we are then engraving that upon tablets which no time will efface, but will brighten and brighten to all eternity. Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment. Do your work not just your work and no more, but a little more for the lavishings sake--that little more which is worth all the rest.You must work--- we must all work To make the world worthy of its children. Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. I don't like work... but I like what is in work -- the chance to find yourself. Your own reality -- for yourself, not for others -- which no other man can ever know. For one human being to love another that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get. Every now and then go away and have a little relaxation. To remain constantly at work will diminish your judgment. Go some distance away, because work will be in perspective and a lack of harmony is more readily seen. You must keep sending work out you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist. Computers shouldn't be unusable. You don't need to know how to work a telephone switch to make a phone call, or how to use the Hoover Dam to take a shower, or how to work a nuclear-power plant to turn on the lights. What would it be like if you lived each day, each breath, as a work of art in progress Imagine that you are a Masterpiece unfolding, every second of every day, a work of art taking form with every breath. Rowing is a sport for dreamers. As long as you put in the work, you can own the dream. When the work stops, the dream dissapears. Nobody's a natural. You work hard to get good and then work to get better. It's hard to stay on top. When work is a pleasure, life is a joy When work is a duty, life is slavery. The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today. I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work 15 and 16 hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example. There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second. Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did. I feel that you are justified in looking into the future with true assurance, because you have a mode of living in which we find the joy of life and the joy of work harmoniously combined. Added to this is the spirit of ambition which pervades your very being, and seems to make the day's work like a happy child at play. (referring to America) The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community. It's not the hours you put in your work that counts, it's the work you put in the hours. The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist. More men die of worry than of work, because more men worry than work. It is one thing to decry the rat race...that is the good and honorable work of moralists. It is quite another thing to quit the rat race, to drop out, to refuse to run any further--that is the work of the individualist. It is offensive because it is impolite it makes the rebuke personal the individualist calls not his or her behavior into question, but mine. What I still ask for daily - for life as long as I have work to do, and work as long as I have life. Earlier people used to switch on TV's after getting bored with their routine work. Now they switch on to routine work after getting bored with TV. Even a clock that does not work is right twice a day. If you can laugh together, you can work together. ...in order that a man may be happy, it is necessary that he should not only be capable of his work, but a good judge of his work. We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose. The man who does not work for the love of work but only for money is not likely to make money nor find much fun in life. People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up. One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art. You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are. By the work one knows the workmen. Work is victory. It is broke. It will not work. It does not go. An honest man is the noblest work of God. It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity. Author Unkown
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