Pausing

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There are those times when life pauses. Waiting.

Yesterday Lessa calls to say that our favorite thrift stores have closed. No one had been giving the Vets their money from Amvets, and the three lawyers that owned it ran it as a for their profit not non profit. We all mourn the loss of this source of everything including good clothes, bathing suits, and endless amusement. I paused in shock when I heard this one.

Just as I get home from the hospital this morning, the hospital calls here again suggesting I need to make an appointment, and all I can say in my confusions is that I already took that nuclear stress test…but at a doctor’s office. There’s no record of this. I was there this morning also taking yet another test. They have no record of my presence there either tho I am wearing a wrist band while I talk with her.

I would find this all mildly amusing but she says I am refusing the test. I feel like a shrill sounding virago when I reiterate that I am not refusing the test and have already taken the test. I don’t ask if there are two stress tests where they make you glow in the dark? I didn’t think so.

I hang up shaking my head thinking I need a baby sitter in all things from clothes to doctors to camera’s. I’ve lost my camera. I can’t bear to think about it. I just have to believe that it will return somehow.

I call Marion on Sunday. “Hello old friend,” she says gently. My eyes leaked.

Today I call again and am told, “She’s making rapid progress toward her goal.”

“I just came from the hospital and many tests,” I say, “and I am very dingy. Can you clarify that for me?”

There was a pause. “She’s no longer responsive, and just the family is here now,” she tells me.

“I will call her writing friends,” I tell this kind voice on the other end of the phone. She thanks me. I pass on the words. Kay and JJ. They will call other’s. JJ and Kennett shared a few moments with her yesterday. JJ said they found her mostly unresponsive then too. So fast her voice gone.

We can say she is making really rapid progress toward her goal. I seem to be pausing a lot these days. Waiting. Nothing rapid about me at all.