WHEN PLANS GO AWRY,
TAKE HEART

Journal of Healing – Dec. 7, 2005

By Mary Koch

 Every once in a while we forget who we are and what we’re supposed  to be doing. We lose track of our hearts. We’re especially vulnerable during the pre-Christmas rush.

            If we’re lucky, we get a wake-up call. Mine came at seven a.m. yesterday morning. I’d already been awake for an hour; just not fully aware.

            My wake-up call was a reminder that I am, first and foremost, my husband’s caregiver. That’s where my heart has been for 12 years, since his stroke. Sometimes, though, I wander.

            We employ a day-time caregiver for 36 hours a week. It allows John to have someone with fresh energy tending to his needs. It also allows me to continue working as a writer, because part of my heart is there too.

Most of the time our system works, but every once in a while, I let myself get a little jammed up.

I’d known the night before that I had too many things planned for the next day. I wrote out a to-do list and a schedule: calls to make, e-mails to send, and the tasks. From 7-9 a.m. at my desk, an appointment at 10 followed by grocery shopping and errands, join John briefly for lunch, then another appointment, back home by 3 p.m., so the caregiver could leave.

Then I would set John up with an audio book and get back to my desk until it was time to cook supper for Katie, who was coming to stay with her father while I went to yet another meeting.

            Home by 9 p.m. to spend an hour talking with and reading to John (I’d actually written my own husband’s name into my appointment book) before the overnight caregiver arrived.

*     *     *

            AS PLANNED, I was at my desk by 7 a.m. when the phone rang. John’s caregiver was sick. My to-do list and schedule were toast.

Some years ago I learned an important lesson from a nun who was working on a community project with me and several others. Every one in the group was an over-committed individual, and we were waiting for the nun to arrive for a meeting one afternoon. We received a call from her that she couldn’t find her car keys.

            She took that as a message that she was supposed to be doing something other than attending this meeting. What a philosophical way to deal with unexpected vexations, I thought.

            So my seven a.m. phone call was a message that the things I’d planned to do that day were not the things I was supposed to do.

*     *     *

            JOHN WOKE UP a little later. I always greet him in the morning by reminding him what day it is and what’s on the agenda. “Snow’s on the way,” I said. “We’re going to spend the day hunkering down.”

            Our morning was consumed with bathing, dressing, exercising. Lunch is a highpoint. After 12 years of working on his swallow, John can finally enjoy a full meal of pureed food. He spent the afternoon with an audio book while I attacked household chores and watched the weather.

            To my relief, the evening meeting was cancelled and we didn’t have to worry about Katie driving home on late-night icy roads. Our evening was the only thing that went the way I’d planned: talking with and reading to John.

            Sometimes those little roadblocks in life that send us on detours are really putting us on the right path, reminding us of who we are and what we’re supposed to be doing.

  © Mary Koch, Omak, Washington 2005

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