Tender mercies
Wednesday May 14th 2014, 9:53 pm
Filed under: Family,Friends,Life,Lupus

My favorite little boys again…

After last month’s lupus meeting there was no way I was going to miss today’s. I wanted to see her, to be there for her. I came with a hat I’d knit in bright navy and royal blues done in two strands of merino and cashmere/mink, with a second hat still on the needles in purples and pinks in a machine washable merino/silk for her to choose from. (I’m dangling those descriptions out there in case she wants me to email her photos or if she’d rather have how they look be a surprise.) I hoped things had gotten easier in her life, but in the meantime, being a knitter, I did for her what I knew how to offer love and support.

Okay, granted, it was 97F today and nobody would even want to think about wearing a warm hat, but the ocean breezes and cool evenings will be back by the end of the week.

Turns out she’d injured her foot and stayed home.

The parking at that hospital is always terrible and our group meets at 12:30–a difficult time to take a long walk across the brightness for the very sun sensitive.

And yet the parking lot is where the hospital chose to throw their staff appreciation barbecue today.  I don’t think someone thought through that they have this nice inner courtyard with doors right there to the blessed air conditioning for people to escape from the record-breaking heat wave, and one can only imagine what it was like for the people manning those grills I saw smoking away.

Oh wait now I get it they didn’t want the walls of the hospital to spontaneously combust. A little distance, a little asphalt. Gotcha.

I circled through the handicapped area. As if. I circled a wider area. Finally, I lucked out as someone pulled out and I put the placard up (so they wouldn’t ticket me if the meeting went over the two-hour limit) and pulled in.

There was an electric cart with a driver watching me as I turned my car off and I mentally apologized to him for getting it before he could as I grabbed my cane and opened my door.

But no:  he was an old retiree volunteering and cruising the parking lot for people who might be stranded by that party and need a lift to the front doors. Really?! He had spotted my placard and stopped. He offered me a ride and suddenly I had a roof between me and the worst of the UV and less time outside than if I’d gotten the very best spot. Sweet.

During the usual how-you-doing part of the meeting, where we’re expected to actually answer that question, I admitted that summer UV is hard: it kicks up my brainstem inflammation and makes it hard to breathe at night. Y’know, the autonomic nervous system thing–not so autonomic. Not, I hastened to add, anything at all like a dozen years ago when it first hit where I didn’t know from night to night whether I would get to wake up in the morning. Only enough to make it a struggle to breathe deep enough to fall asleep, a far better problem to have.

And it didn’t even occur to me till writing that just now that I could have handed that finished blue hat to one of them for safekeeping, just in case. Because I simply took it utterly for granted that there was no need.

Which is so much better of a place to be in. And, but for that question, I’d almost missed seeing it.

Life is good.


3 Comments so far
Leave a comment

Love that picture!

I love electric carts that happen by, too. They’ve helped me in airports.

Comment by RobinM 05.15.14 @ 3:31 pm

What a heart warming picture!

I’m glad that angel passed by. 🙂

Comment by Suzanne from Montreal 05.15.14 @ 5:17 pm

Another utterly precious photo! I’m glad for the kindness shown too.

Comment by Channon 05.17.14 @ 9:20 am



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