I am participating in 31 Days of Five Minute Free Writes 2018 (all of my submissions can be found here).
Today’s prompt is: COMFORT
The absolute first thing that comes to mind when I think about “comfort” is how uncomfortable my mom was at so many stages of her series of hospitalizations that started last December and lasted (with the exception of one 24-hour period at home) though her death in February.
I met and observed so many hard-working medical professionals and paraprofessionals throughout that period. They deserve so much more support (probably pay too) and recognition than they receive. I saw them give their all while other families celebrated Christmas and New Year’s comfortable at home.
However, no matter how competent and attentive a nurse or CNA is, there’s a certain amount of comfort you can’t achieve when you are flat on your back and don’t have full control over how things are going to go — where you have to lie, who is going to poke you when, what you can eat, whether or not the ice chip cup is a half-inch too far away for you to reach.
My mom, being my mom, handled it all with grace and patience. She didn’t want to be a bother. Yet that is a piece of the whole experience of her illness(es) that is hard to shake. She never got back to being able to do what she wanted to do, when she wanted to do it, and to sleep in her own bed at home with her beloved spouse.
There’s something unfair in all of that. However, judging by what her therapists and nurses, etc., have said to me, she brought them comfort.
And that, the fact that my mom helped someone else even though she was the “sick” one, surprises me not one bit.
Wife of one, Mom of two, Friend of many. My pronouns are she/her/hers.
Your mom sounds like the definition of grace and thoughtfulness. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, Paula.
She really was, Jane. She set a stellar example.
Your mom sounds like such an incredible woman!
She really was!