When God closes a door He opens a window.
After the bump-along-the-bottom that was last week, a few small windows have opened a crack to let in a bit of much needed fresh air, though in some cases the back draft has slammed another door shut.
The hospital doctors wish to keep my mother in for a week on a continuous heart monitor. This is a door and a window. Wanting to monitor anyone’s heart for a whole week is not a sign of rampant good health. On the other hand we will get to know exactly what her heart is doing.
Yesterday on the way back from the supermarket my husband found that the car, just out of a fortnight at the garage, expensively, had no brakes at all. He put his foot to the floor and for lo! Nothing occurred and continued to occur right into the nearest lay by. How glad are we that this did not happen on the fast A roads on the way to see my mother. (Very glad, as it happens, really quite glad.)
Every other time my mother has been in hospital I have lived in her house and visited. This time I cannot get there because the car is brakeless. Even just a couple of months ago I would have seen this as a door slammed in my face but, looked at in a different way, it’s a window.
I have asked the wonderful neighbour to feed the cat, I have told a couple of friends, who may visit, that she is in hospital. I have arranged with the care agency to have a discharge conference with the hospital. Meanwhile my mother is looked after and continuously monitored, she thinks she is in a hotel, apparently (which is a step up from her last hospital visit, after which she told everyone she’d been camping) and isn’t asking for me. I cannot get there.
What I have here is a window into a week off. A mere two or three phone calls every day to reassure friends that she is well and I have a week off.
I have only had two days off in a whole year, and both of them I was under general anaesthetic.
I intend to sleep, get up, look out of the window, go in the garden, sleep and paint.
I have been so stretched that I didn’t have time to inform my favourite shopping channel that I’d had a new plastic bank card, so they automatically cancelled an order that I really wanted and they cannot get back again. On the window side, looking through their website late at night, waiting for the phone, I found a cardigan for £0.00, which is, coincidentally, my favourite price, in a colour I’ve been looking for and in my size! I ordered it for P&P only and went to bed not really believing it, but the next day there was the order actually really real, though if an empty packet turned up in the post I would not be amazed.
Nice things like that rarely happen to me. When my premium bond came up, thirty years ago, I had barely cashed the cheque when I was diagnosed with cancer. Is this a preparation for a bad result from the MRI scan, or a consolatory window for all the awfulness of the past year?
I’ve no idea, all you can do if you get a window is to enjoy the view.
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JaneLaverick.com-swings, roundabouts, doors, windows, rollers, coasters and all that.