Widow gets surprise gift from husband, 2 years after his death
OSKALOOSA, Ia. — If a person’s life could fit inside a box, Glen W. Davis’ spirit resides in the small, beat-up Rexall first aid kit tin sitting on his wife’s bedside table.
A surprise, the tin was discovered lovingly placed inside a secret, specially built nook, revealed when neighbor Carl Haffner took a sledgehammer to an old closet in the Davis’ house, which he purchased when the couple moved out. The worn canister held two pay stubs from Glen’s decades of work at a Pella window factory and his hunting and trapping license, renewed in 1992.
Hidden under those papers, tucked away as if for an emergency, were 11 crisp $100 bills.
If you ask Haffner, the bills were stashed not for a crisis, per se, but in case Glen’s much-beloved wife, Diane, needed something and he wasn’t there to give it to her.
Glen died about two years ago of emphysema. In January, Diane was diagnosed with Stage 4 cervical cancer. Just six weeks after she learned of her condition, Diane, 65, lost the use of her legs and moved in to a nursing care facility.
All things considered, Diane was handling her new station in life well, she said, but there was one glaring problem: her chair.
Provided by the care facility, the recliner’s padding had lost its firmness long ago. The seat was crooked. And it let out this staccato popping noise when she moved too quickly.
Diane asked Haffner, a family friend for more than 25 years, to look for a replacement chair within days of moving in, but the one she needed — one with power-controlled headrests and lumbar support and extra comfy padding — was too expensive.
Too expensive, that is, until Glen’s secret tin was discovered.
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