Taking My Medicine

Yesterday for me started at 5:30 am and didn't end until 12:30 am, when I finally, totally passed out next to my guy. It was a very fine day for him, considering, and a horrible day for me personally, but I got through it with the same spine I've always had -- the titanium one I haul out when things get truly challenging.

Here he is waiting to go into surgery. He's completely self-absorbed, telling me this and that and joking about the whole thing because that's what he does when he's really scared. I am trying to keep it together. They're going to put the love of my life under general anesthesia, cut into him and repair the damage he's inflicted on himself by trying to be thirty years old again, but I just have to get through the day and put my faith in people I don't know and can't hear when they talk to me and only get about every third word by reading lips. They're also running an hour and a half late. Yes, totally relaxing.

Here I'm in the surgery waiting room. I just meditated silently with my phone (there's a mala app!) which helped. I also crocheted to keep my hands occupied. When I took this pic it was the moment when they were closing his procedure (the blood red rectangle on the board.) That was the moment I finally could take a deep breath. I walked down to the coffee shop and got a terrible lukewarm cup of coffee and a fairly decent turkey sandwich, sat at a table and contemplated my life choices.

I was supposed to have help today, to manage dealing with the people at the hospital, then drive us home from the hospital, and help me move a 200+ lbs. man out of the car and into the house without stressing his surgical site. This help is someone for whom I've done a great deal over the last year, and only asked this in return.

My help did not show up. They had excuses, and good ones, as they always do when they shirk their responsibilities and break their promises. They did more than once pester me via my phone for updates on my guy's condition, which was like rubbing salt in the wounds.

Keep in mind that I am functionally deaf, crippled with arthritis, and I have not driven a car in about seven years. This is why I asked for help. They always tell independent people like me that we have to ask for help, so I did. I have been practicing driving over the last week, however, because I knew. I just knew on this horrible, unbelievably stressful day my help would break their promise and I would have to handle it myself. So I did.

I'm not angry. I knew it would happen. I even updated the no-help via the phone without comment or malice, an act I considered absolutely heroic. My spiritual teachings tell me to forgive, let it go, but not to forget what I've learned. It's like swallowing bitter medicine -- you just have to take it. I will tell you that I have forgiven them. I will also never trust or ask this person for help again. It's one of those "If I am on fire, I will not ask you to spit on me" situations.

This is what made it all worth my time, angst and exhausting effort. Seeing my guy smile after his surgery (okay you can't see it, but it's behind the smiley face sun.) That was all the repayment I needed.

We got home, and I fussed over him until I literally could not keep my eyes open another second. We slept together, deeply and perfectly, and woke this morning much improved.

Now I'm off to walk my dogs. :)