What I Learned Today

"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards." Vernon Sanders Law

There are things you learn, factual things, snippets, items of information, and then there are things you know with your whole being. The space between the two is vast. Today I had a fact cross over into a knowing.

I know my grandmother is going to die.

Until today this existed for me as a fact, but, this afternoon as I watched her lying in a hospital bed, looking so, so small, her legs and arms so frail they reminded me of the bones of sparrows, I knew she was mortal, and she is dying, and, while that will be difficult and sad and painful, it will be ok.

I wonder now if I am a bad person for writing that. That isn't a question, just a statement.

When I finished my stress test, I called my mom at work and was told by her coworker that she hadn't come in today, that she had, in fact, called in and, "said something about trying to get her mom admitted." When I'd left for the test, everything was business as usual, not so now.

She hadn't called me. When I called home, the line was busy. I drove right home, and, seeing her car still there, parked around the block to allow space for the ambulance.

A few hours later she was, once again, having fluid removed from around her right lung. They took out two litres, with more left to go. She stopped them at the 2L. She was crying a bit at one point and it was one of the hardest things I've had to see. I was with her, standing in front as she leaned on some pillows so they could stick a catheter in her back to release the fluid.

She's home now, and she ate a good dinner, and is asleep, and all is well again, for the moment. But I know she is going to die, probably sooner than later. It's inevitable.

I also learned that I am not taking care of myself, in a number of ways. I looked like crap today at the stress test, and as I looked at the other people sitting in the row of chairs, IV ports taped to their right arms, I though, "my God, I look like I live in a van down by the river." (I was wearing a KU t-shirt, a black hoodie, and grey yoga pants and sneakers, a combo that doesn't necessarily sound that bad, but it was, it WAS.)

I was also the youngest person sitting in that row of chairs.

I wouldn't let anyone I love treat themselves like I've been treating myself. I wouldn't let them eat what I eat. I wouldn't let them be as inactive as I am. I wouldn't let them feel as bad as I do. I would take care of them.

I need to take care of me too.