A week of driving to the hospital in stormy weather: yesterday I walked out to my car just in time to see a mom and teenage boy at theirs next to mine taking photos of the large limb a eucalyptus had dropped on their car. Not sure if the branch on the other side had been part of the first or not as he pulled it out of the way.
Today, blue sky and new snow on the nearby mountains.
I did not park under the trees.
This afternoon we watched a video and then with Richard and a nurse watching I practiced sanitizing edges and connecting examples of IV meds and saline syringes and how to do which dose how fast and how often. You set everything out in order on the sanitized tray and then you work your way across according to specific time intervals. (Write it out, I said. Yes they will.)
And then they kept him there.
The tall balding absolute beanpole of a nurse who loves his patients and looks and has a ready smile like Alex Pretti got assigned to him this evening and I didn’t say anything to the guy because I’m sure he’s heard it a lot and how can it not break your heart all over again.
Friends came to visit.
Turns out that from church this week, G had a pulmonary embolism, J had a burst appendix, L had a stroke, Richard of course…
And someone had a baby a few days ago.
I remember the wild thoughts with our first of, They’re sending ME home with this tiny thing? They think we know anything about being parents? Don’t they know we’ve never done this before? Don’t they know we have no idea what on earth we’re doing?
And then, day by single long day, you find out you can, in fact, do this, that you do learn as you go and it’s the wanting to do your best by others that makes it all somehow, inexplicably work out.
It’s all about learning to trust the life that is in us.