Poor Steve.
He knew I’d been having a tough morning, but when he arrived home for lunch today, he wasn’t really prepared to find me gone.
Just gone.
Snowy was put away in his kennel. My van was sitting in the driveway. But I was gone.
He looked through every room and bathroom. Twice.
He went to the third floor and looked through Sarah’s domain. No wife.
He called my cell phone. No answer.
He went outside and looked up and down the street to see if maybe I was wandering mindlessly about, endlessly uttering incoherent, pre-mastectomy mutterings.
There was no incoherently muttering wife to be found.
He came back inside. He pondered for a while. When he was done with that, he pondered a while more.
And then? All that pondering paid off! He remembered something!
He remembered that I had told him I was having lunch today with a friend from the church; however, what I hadn’t told him was that she was picking me up. So when he forgot the lunch date, saw my van in the driveway and still wasn’t able to find me? Let’s just say he was very relieved when all the facts finally came together and he realized I really hadn’t evaporated. Or run away to Tahiti. (smile)
Lunch was especially therapeutic after a very hard morning. The friend I ate with has a 30-year old daughter who had a bilateral mastectomy about a month ago and is now on chemo. My friend lives next door to her daughter and so she’s had a front row seat on all the nursing tasks involved; she was a veritable fount of knowledge when it came to answering the practical and personal concerns that I had about what the whole post-surgical process would be like.
So while on one hand it was a little overwhelming to hear it all, on the other hand it was comforting. The only thing worse than having too much information about an upcoming surgery (and all its ramifications) is not having enough information.
And speaking of surgeries, for those of you who have had bilateral mastectomies (with immediate expander implants) or have a friend who has had one—I am curious about the length of the hospital stay. We were told that bilateral mastectomies are now done on an out patient basis, which basically shocked and alarmed me. (However, they have reserved a hospital room for me to stay in overnight if I don’t feel up to going home, which makes me feel better.) I would be curious to know what other peoples’ experiences have been in that regard. You can post your response in the comments area or email me at smithellaneous@yahoo.com
Thank you so much to each of you who left a comment after my earlier post today. It was so touching to feel the cyber hubs and loving prayers headed in my direction. I felt encouraged and not quite so overwhelmed by life.
It’s funny though. After I posted this morning, I felt sort of guilty. I thought, “I know that so many people have told me that they come to Smithellaneous for a smile or a cheery story or a heartwarming anecdote. And now today, people may have dropped by for encouragement and all they got were the morose ramblings of a weighted down pastor’s wife.”
And yet I know and you know that no one is cheery all the time; we all have our down days. But I’m just not clear if I need to be forthright with my down times or wait for the down time to pass before posting. I do want you to feel like this is a place where you can receive an infusion of joy and yet every day isn’t a happy day for me, especially with what we have going on right now. I guess I’ll just have to find the balance between being honest and being downright depressing. (smile)
For right now though, I will share some pictures with you of some recent happy mail that made me smile big. Really, really big. Which I really, really needed that day.
The first thing to arrive was this lovely box with a shiny gold tissue laid down over it. I was so impressed by the presentation, I almost didn’t want to open the box!
But I did, finally. And saw these.
Tulips! Lovely, lovely tulips! And an official Tulip Vase.
The whole kitchen was enhanced by the tulips in its midst.
Question: How can a vase of tulips possibly be made any more beautiful than it already is? Answer: When a recently delivered box of chocolates is placed in front of it.
And when the chocolates are surrounded by various cards, it gets even better. And when each card represents the love and prayers of friends who I haven’t even met, it’s even lovelier.
And now, several days later, the tulips are still adorning our home! (Although the chocolate is, um, gone. Mysteriously gone. Ahem.)
And so there you have it! A post about chocolate and tulips.
What could possibly be cheerier than that?
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P.S. I mentioned last week that Nathan's girlfriend, Meagan, had surgery. If you have a moment, drop by her mom's blog to see how she's doing and leave a comment. It's turning out to be quite a challenging time for them.
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