Hanging On

We had been coming through a very busy time. Just as we finished the major part of our move, we were hit by a series of social events--good things all, but in the sort of squeezed sequence that makes you wish you had a bit more control over the timing of so much goodness. But that's life, and we were hanging on and enjoying it.

We spent an interesting evening sampling an Indian dinner, won at a church benefit auction months ago. We entertained non-family visitors for the first time in our new house--the Scandinavian Scribblers from whom we receive stimulation to write and enjoyment from sharing experiences. We made it to the local cinema--on Senior Discount Day, no less--to see The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. We met a new group of people at the Torch Club of Cincinnati and heard an excellent overview of recent genetics research. We attended a Danish Dinner with talks about Piet Hein and Jørn Utzon, and samples of æbleskiver and homemade pumpernickel bread. I lead a book discussion on A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman, at my new reading group, and I molded my mind to applying a developing knowledge of XML protocols to a web publication. We attended an evening lecture on current Alzheimer's disease research being conducted in Cincinnati and Lexington, Kentucky and I was contemplating whether I should offer myself as a subject for (I hope) a control group.

And then in the space of just one hour after a pleasant but uneventful lunch of green salad, mixed fruit, and working on the Word Game puzzle from the daily newspaper, it went from every-day routine to crisis.  An emergency trip to the hospital, which we had remarked casually only days before was just 15 minutes away, never dreaming that we would need it so soon. A harrowing time as I saw my husband become faint, weaken, go into shock, and lose consciousness from acute internal bleeding. He revived slowly after IV fluids started dripping into his arm, but not before I realized with a conscious certainty that I had not experienced in awhile that I really was not ready quite yet to go into that next phase of my life alone.

He hung on through the night and through the corrective procedure the next morning, and then he hung on well enough through the day so that he was released from the hospital by supper time. And we are hanging on during this weekend, following doctors' instructions meticulously. And in all the days ahead I will try to hang on mindfully to that conscious awareness that I experienced during those few interminable hours of crisis, for the perspective it can provide when I am faced with irritations that should be small.