On the Way to Wonder

Sr. Wantabee was at the hospital yesterday. She only had the blessing of visiting with two patients as she had meetings but both had smiles on their faces.

The first man, married 47 years had lost his wife in February and was in for a hip replacement. He had first met his wife in high school and invited her to a dance – rather funny as he thinks about it as she was on crutches from an operation for being born without a hip socket. She was a good sport. They fell in love and had a wonderful marriage. Yes, she did develop rheumatoid arthritis, Parkinsons, cancer and multiple other problems that necessitated him leaving his employ to nurse her with her cancer last year. She had died a year later and now he faced the loneliness. All said with a smile! Such a horrendous story of struggle with illness and limitations through child bearing and life and he smiled. Did that smile hold back the tears, Sr. Wantabee wondered.

The next patient wanted to talk about her life too. “I’m a train wreck!” she shared with a smile. A fall had left her with a fractured shoulder that was undiagnosed which then necessitated a total shoulder replacement. She had now fallen again a year later breaking her humerous (an arm bone), ruining the first surgery and requiring more surgery. In the meantime her achillies heel had degenerated and needed to be rebuilt. Her beloved mother and friend had died. Her beloved dog of 5 or 6 years had died. She has Parkinson’s and will go home to a husband with Emphesema from smoking. We agreed that some days just don’t seem like living and when we get to heaven we want to go to the video library and see the replay of 19… so we can better understand the bigger picture that our little suffering fits into. Yes, she would love a prayer, and we bowed our heads together.

Both tales of woe told with smiling faces left Sr. Wantabee somehow sad. We each carry our tale of woe and challenges how do we tell our story? As a detached news reporter, as a victim of circumstances, as the master of our fate?? How does she see her life story – with a smile??

This entry was posted on Friday, July 9th, 2010 at 6:17 pm and is filed under Flakey People in My Life You Should Meet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.