Day: February 23, 2024

I remember my mother-in-law commenting not long before her death that her social calendar had become a series of reminders to visit doctors and attend funerals. She was only seventy six when she left this world but that was almost miraculous given that doctors had told her when she was only a teen that she would probably not live past her thirtieth birthday due to a heart defect that had been with her since birth. 

I was still young enough when she remarked about the fate of growing older to have little understanding of what her life had become. Now twenty years late I am beginning to understand. My social media is filled with reports of friends undergoing difficult surgeries and procedures that become the focus of their lives. Both my husband and I receive a constant stream of information telling us of the death of yet another high school classmate or the health battles of friends and family. We have reached the terrible moment of comparing our ailments in conversations with our peers. 

This year the annual wellness visits with our primary care physicians have led to a number of “due diligence” tests for the two of us. We have been to the second floor of the Methodist Hospital Outpatient Center so often that the guys who do the valet parking have begun greeting us like old friends. My calendar looks like it belongs to a social butterfly until one notices that most of the reserved dates and times focus on medical tests. It’s both a blessing and a nuisance that has me thinking of my sweet mother-in-law. 

So far both me and my husband have received a clean bill of health at each juncture and we appreciate that our doctors want to be certain that the little glitches that they observe in us are nothing serious, but I have grown weary of driving to the Houston Medical Center several times each week. Sometimes I am waiting for my husband while he endures MRIs and biopsies and other times I am the one getting venous doppler exams on my lower extremities. While I wait I observe the people who sit with us, sometimes looking very concerned. I create little stories in my head about them, remembering details of the furrows in their brows and the looks of anxiety in their eyes. 

I realize how much real suffering is taking place on a daily basis all over the world and marvel that we are so often totally unaware of it. I find myself feeling humbled and thankful for my own good fortune in being only minutes away from such incredible medical services and doctors. It has all made me far more aware of how it must feel to be engaged in an extended battle for good health. I see the world a bit differently now than I did when my mother-in-law attempted to explain what it was like to spend a lifetime being told that her heart might fail her at any moment. Little wonder that she told the same stories about her life which was focused on making it from one year to the next. 

I have a friend who will undergo surgery soon and a cousin who is recovering from a broken hip. Another friend has met the halfway point of her cancer treatments and yet another recently completed his schedule of treatments. My sister-in-law is struggling to reclaim her life after a major injury and my brother is hoping that his Parkinson’s disease will progress slowly. The health issues of people that I know are cropping up all around me and suddenly I feel a new sense of compassion and understanding of how isolating and frightening it is to wait for a diagnosis. 

Aging and ultimately death is inevitable for each of us. While I often boast that my own life has been so full that I would not want anyone to grieve for me if I were to suddenly die, I have recently felt the human desire to hang onto life just a bit longer. I realize that facing the thought of leaving all that we love behind is quite daunting. so when I see the fear in the eyes of someone whose prognosis is uncertain I have a better sense of how awful it is for them. We like to believe that we will be courageous in such moments but the reality is that bad news shakes us to our core, especially when it is totally unexpected. 

I grow wiser as I age and sometimes think of the younger me and wish that I had learned what I now know just a bit earlier. I think that I would have visited my older relatives and friends a more often. I might have listened to their stories and concerns with more interest. Perhaps I would have slowed down just to be with them rather rushing around doing tasks that might have waited for my attention. 

All is good with me for now but life has taught me that every single hour is uncertain and we would do well to make the most of each of our days. If there is a battle for justice to be embraced then we should fight for it. If we keep wanting to see a certain person, we should not put off making it happen. Each of us will one day become the dust that we work so hard to remove from our homes. Perhaps a better use of our time would be to schedule time with someone we love before they are sitting on the second floor of an outpatient clinic waiting for test results that will define a shorter stay in the world with us. None of us want to feel regret that we never managed to find the time for someone who needed us. Schedule some love today.