“You look closely enough,
you’ll find that everything has a weak spot where it can break,
sooner or later.”
Anthony Hopkins
Fractures well cured make us more strong.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(the culprit to the fractured windshield / Julie Cook / 2016)
The phone rang early…
it was before 8 and I was in the shower.
Well actually both phones were ringing at once…my cell phone and the good ol landline.
That’s when you know it’s bad…ringing phones in stereo.
Our life has been rather topsy turvy as of late so phones ringing, really before one expects, tends to send me automatically into mobilizing the troops, manning the torpedoes and battening down the hatches mode.
Dripping wet while frantically grabbing a towel I see that the caregiver is on one phone and Dad is on another. For just the slightest millisecond I debate…hummmmm, get back in the shower and pretend life is golden or bite the bullet and answer the damn phones….
Long story short—how is still unclear, but they both fell—-into one another, which is still a bit unclear, and both were down for the count.
Dad, the turtle of the two—when on his back isn’t getting up without help.
Miraculously however, he did manage to get up and get to the door to let the frantic caregiver in who had just arrived for the day.
My stepmother however…she was truly down for the count and was not getting up.
“Do I call the ambulance????” the caregiver asks in one ear as Dad wants to know if he needs to push the life alert button he wears religiously around his neck in my other ear.
Somewhere in my brain I’m thinking both of these people are in the same room, why are they both calling me when I think one of them could handle calling while the other one panics?!
Well since I’m a good hour and a half away, still wringing wet, I’m going with 911.
The short end of this tale is that my stepmother “fractured” her wrist and is in cast and sling.
Dad is still confused as to how “this arm,” as he points to his right arm, came around and knocked into my stepmother, sending her and him to the ground.
“That’s your story Dad and you’re sticking to it??” I flatly inquire.
My suspicion is Dad, at 5 feet nine inches and 185 lbs, got up out of his chair, turned, lost his balance and fell into her–all 5 feet 1 inches and 98 pounds worth.
After racing (an oxymoron word) to Atlanta for the second time this week, dealing with this latest ambulance ride and ER visit, where I am certain they now know my stepmother by name, I got everything and everyone settled and readied for the ride back home… as deja vu is the current theme with me and Atlanta.
I tell Dad that I think we need to consider 24 hour care and or they will have to move to a facility that can look after them 24/7.
He vehemently balked at that idea…
Back in the car and back on the interstate for the umpteenth time this week, I didn’t see it or even hear it…yet there it was…a strange black line on my windshield..
“What the….”
Thinking maybe a piece of pine straw was stuck on the windshield, I watch the pine straw snake it’s way along my windshield.
The pine straw was no longer that and my fear was confirmed… my windshield was indeed “fractured”
Great.
A fractured stepmother and a fractured windshield…..
(must have been a Ga Tech rock as it hit right at the UGA sticker)
The good thing is that she will heal, allbeit slowly as 88 year old bones are brittle, fragile and slow to grow back…
I read on an orthopedic page that…
“Broken bone ends heal by “knitting” back together with new bone being formed around the edge of the broken parts.”
Which mind you is pretty darn cool—that our broken bones can regenerate.
My windshield, for a hefty little price, can also be miraculously repaired–as the glass folks are scheduled to come out and replace it tomorrow.
As I continue to contemplate this day’s whole fractured theme, and how we have recently dealt with a deeper fracture than that….
there are those fractures of the physical that run in and out of our lives…
I marvel over the Master Physician and His ability to heal all of the fractures of our lives—
those outward appearing breaks as well as those unseen internal breaks.
It’s just a matter of asking for His tender care…as well as allowing Him access to our “breaks”
Here’s to our regenerated healing…..
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he saved them from their distress.
He sent out his word and healed them;
he rescued them from the grave.
Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love
and his wonderful deeds for mankind.
Psalm 107:19-21
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