Originally written
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
More of a window into my brain these days. Warning - beware - it is a strange place to be.
What a surreal life we are living right now. I know there are many who have walked this path before me and many who will walk it after me, but somehow when it is your turn it feels as if there is no way you can possibly walk through it. Then you look down and somehow your feet are moving and things are progressing. Stranger still is that I hear things being said and respond appropriately on the outside, but on the inside it is like that scene from the Matrix where the bullets are floating all around Neo but he isn’t touched by them in a bizarre slow motion. The words just linger there too large to be ingested. Too foreign to be understood. And then suddenly in a flash everything is at warp speed again.
“You need to call the funeral home to prepare for arrangements, would you like a flag or no flag, open or closed casket? His bowels may be obstructed and this is what we need YOU to do. He will either have a heart attack or drown. It could be days or months. Does he have life insurance? Where is his will? Do you want a DNR......” And on and on the words get spoken and linger out there till suddenly there’s a phone call and ....
“You’ve missed swim lessons, Are you coming to Bible Study? The sherriffs department would love a donation...” - “Real life” continues around me. I have two sweet girls who still need to be bathed, read to, and taught how to subtract, how to add three yellow bears and two green bears to make five bears in all. There is chicken on the counter that was destined to be lightly fried and drenched be a lovely lemon caper sauce with a side of sauteed asparagus, but instead gets moved back to the frig and replaced by turkey, chips and cereal. I have a sweet husband who verbalizes his great love of turkey sandwiches. Life – the normal one – desperately wants to continue on while the surreal one builds into the tornadic like state. All the pieces of the storm are coming together and I can’t stop it. I just stand and watch as cloud after cloud forms.
Yesterday a “well-meaning” person thought it was the right time to look at me and with an ever-so-accusing tone ask, “Why are you still bringing him to dialysis?” On the outside I stammered around with words like, “well I am just taking this one day at a time and doing the best I can and he says he still wants to come.” Inside my head was a much sharper conversation that went like this:
“Why are you still bringing him?”
“Oh I don’t know, somehow allowing him to drown in his own mucus, just seems a little disturbing to me today, so I brought him. Pardon me if we seem to be dragging our feet in your estimation.”
But of course those thoughts stay internal – at least for now. I am afraid there will be a day that the thoughts match up with the spoken word.
The reality is I ask myself that same question. On the ride home from dialysis I began to feel anxious about whether I am doing this right? I started to feel overwhelmed by the decisions I have to make and then watch. And I just looked at the Lord and said, “I just have to trust you Lord. Trust that you will tell me when and what to do and what and when to do it.” If I get tossed back and forth between everyone else’s experiences, advice and opinions I too will drown. So day by day I take this one step at a time, often feeling like I might fall at any moment, but the steps come.
Thanks again for "listening."
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