Care
Givers
“An
anonymous poet defined a friend as ‘someone who knows the song in your heart
and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.’ True friends
are those whose love and reassurance help us to retain a positive belief in
ourselves in times of difficulty or self-doubt.”
David
Ross (1001 Pearls of Wisdom, “The song of friendship;” page 109, Duncan Baird
Publishers, 2008)
You may
have noticed I’ve been MIA for the last week, more or less. That’s because I
had surgery for a knee replacement on Tuesday, and from then on had “mush-brain”
and couldn’t find the keys on my phone or computer, much less form sentences. That’s
a factual statement. Did you know that your fingers turn into wet noodles when you
take narcotics? They do—and your gut responds by closing up shop and declaring
the rest of your life a blank slate in which you can’t remember anything you’ve
ever known, and you can’t learn anything new. Oblivion.
Finally,
however, I have a few hours of consciousness when I am neither falling asleep
standing straight up nor groping hopelessly for words I’ve always known that seem shut into a vault with an eight-inch-thick door. So let me get these words down
here while I can—I have the best friends in the world. I have friends who are willing
to come over, herd me around while listening to me bitch about it. They shove medicine
down my throat even when I fight them, and they force-feed me so that I will
not simply waste away during this period of recuperation. They change my
clothes, pull up my pants when I can’t get to them, and slip socks on my feet,
which seem to have migrated to Iowa. I've had more phone calls and texts from
friends in the last three days than I usually get in a year. “Just checking on
you,” they say, “What do you need? What can I do?”
I
sincerely hope that you have friends like this. Especially, if you ever have surgery
and need to swallow oblivion-pills for weeks. If you do, kiss their feet, and
remember to say thank you, thank you, thank you. Now I have to go stick my swollen,
stapled leg into an ice-water machine and eat the breakfast that my care-giver
has prepared for me. I send you love and ask you to pray for my friends.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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