In Shock

Suddenly, the phone message. The call came during a long morning meeting with the Seniors’ Health nurse, but ironically I left it to the machine.

“We have a room for Don.  Call me immediately. You have 24 hours to respond.”

Shock. Fear. Grief. Guilt. So much grief, especially as he murmured over and over, not knowing the situation, “I love you, babe. You will do what is best.”

As our caregiver friend and I sat drinking tea, she as stunned as I, and semi-out of a job to boot, it seemed to us, from Don’s disjointed comments, that he knew.”I don’t mind,” he said. “It is a good place except for the screaming.”

We just looked at each other. There had been a patient at the Lodge who screamed when she was being tended to.

But now, he is being assigned to a new different place, by all accounts good, and a special care ward, and here in the valley locally, after all.

Now what? What do I tell him? How do I stop my heart from breaking over and over again?

How could it come to this?

And then, as if to remind me that this was the only option to save myself, we went through a good 3 hours of discussion about whether it was OK to stay in this place tonight, whether there was enough money, where the car was, and whether we should just take off and sleep in the car. Despite my grief, I was again just about ready to blow a gasket, except of course that would do nothing except make a bad situation worse. I think perhaps people under-estimate how much discipline it takes to answer the same question 30 or 40 times a night, night after night.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Tomorrow will come.