Smaller Spoons

For the first time in many years, my roommate will not be blogging today. He is ill and had to go into the hospital. I'm worried for him and sad that he had to miss time on his blog. It's been a personal goal for him to blog every day, even if it was just a sentence or two.

I was also very sad that I couldn't go with him into the hospital, to sit beside him and offer some level of comfort as he was processed in. The last time he was in the hospital, roughly 17 years ago, I stayed with him every night to make sure he was okay. I had much better mobility then. I weighed a lot less and my breathing was better. There was no way, even with my walker, that I could have managed to walk through something as huge as a hospital.

Instead, I'll stay home and try to manage. I know I'll do poorly at this. I've tried to divide my days into tasks that have to be accomplished. The cats have to be fed and watered. Their box has to be cleaned. Tomorrow I have to be out of town, so my bigger task today involves making sure I'm prepared for that. Tomorrow, when I get home, I'll have to find some way to manage to get the trash out of the house and to the curb.

Over the years, the limited number of spoons we have has grown smaller. Every year, there are more compromises with what we can accomplish. There are more things that have to be let go, more floors that go dirty. More dust that gathers. I'm starting to think that we're to the point where we need a home health care person because a lot of this is just getting beyond us.

I realize I've talked a lot about the physical side of this situation. I'm not doing this to be cold. Right now, we have no idea what all is wrong with him. I have no idea when he'll be coming home. It scares me because he is a light in my life and I don't want that light to go out. That's too big to think about right now. It's too big to be scared of. In the meantime, my mind is just focused on what can and cannot happen, on what needs to happen, and other things where I have a small amount of control.