Hawaii 2010

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Monday, February 22, 2010

Finally a Fire


Last Winter we went through several boxes of fire logs, and this year, a rainy cold front finally allowed me to fire up the fireplace. Sorry people who live in cold places, our fireplace is more for entertainment and decoration, but the touch of warmth cozifies the room.

Many of my friends are in their 80s, and I simply want to tell the younger generation that folks who reach that age in good health are lively, funny, active, interesting and loving. We laugh and kid each other, as they continue to live full lives and drive and work and read. I have a very sweet man who has been on hospice with advance heart failure. But, oddly, he continues to stay on the living side of the river month after month. He has been in and out of hospice facilities, and although all preventative measures except oxygen to keep him comfortable, he gets close and then rallies. We have actually joked about it. I have wrestled with the common saying we have here that God knows the exact moment of your check out and until then you are invincible. Oh, I forget to tell you, he is 92.

To be fair and balanced, it is difficult to see people going down, and struggling to get through each day, take the right medications, get nourished and try to maintain a lifestyle when every activity becomes a challenge, when conversation becomes a struggle to organize thoughts and to remember specifics. We say.....getting older is not for sissies.

2 comments:

kc bob said...

Ditto that last thought.. add illness and disability to it and sometimes life can seem unbearable.

Judith Kelly said...

I am looking at a winter wonderland. Yesterday we got 2 feet of fluffy snow. I was able to get out an walk and play with the neighbor kids for a while. I have been on a new medication and almost pain free for a week. Today it is 35 and raining and the two feet of beauty has shrunk to9 inches of wet, heavy, heavy dense white cinder blocks. To heavy for me to shovel without hurting my self. I am a prisoner until some one becomes available to shovel me out. The school is closed and some people do not have electricity. I am attaching this to your blog because sometimes my faith is like this, truly beautiful and then extremely trying. Then I have to remember that the way to shovel out is always there.